The Winter Frost
by zlot
Summary: By sound statistical probability, Prim has dodged the Reaping, but hunger is more than a game. Against all of Katniss's efforts, it was soon going to become a very grim reality. Gale will go to the mines, and her own hunting will not be enough for both families. With winter coming, it might not even be enough for her own.
1. Saige

All rights to Suzanne Collins, actual author of the The Hunger Games trilogy.

UPDATE: I'm going through and editing for typos. If you see any, please just leave a review about them, and I'll get to them as fast as I can. I found out I wrote the first couple chapters without a set language dictionary, so Auto-Correct didn't highlight anything. Ugh.

* * *

_One slip in thousands. That's all I have._

_Roped off at the back of town square, I can barely see the district's outrageously gaudy escort. It was probably for the best. Everything she said sounded like mad whispers calling me forward, omens that the odds would betray me. It was as though her every word about the glory of the Capitol was ladened with some dread just for me. I was afraid enough of what she was saying; I didn't need to be terrified further by a nightmarish image._

_What I could see, I found myself unable to ignore: the video she had each year about the rebellion over seventy years ago, and how it led to the creation of the Hunger Games. I was alone in my attentiveness, and as each bullet flew in the video, they seemed to fly out and shoot everyone in town square. Everyone in the district just started dropping in a gross shower of lead and blood and flesh, and I couldn't scream, I couldn't cower, I couldn't help. I could only stand and watch and let it happen, let thousands of people die around me by the Capitol's hand._

One slip in thousands. That's all I have. I owe it all to Katniss that, for my first reaping, everything is stacked in my favor. More than that, mom and I both owe it to her that we've survived these past five years. She's already on her way to the woods by the time I wake up, back to the hunting we've depended on.

Mom seems to know the moment I wake up, for she rises right up with me. There are some tear stains on the canvas bed sheet- mattress cover, more accurately- and from where they are so close to mom's chest, I can tell they were mine. And if they were mine, there could only be one reason why. The day finally came for that first reaping I've been afraid of for so long.

I've been afraid ever since Katniss's first reaping, terrified that her bravery in hunting and taking tesserae would get her killed, either in the wilderness or in the dreaded, awful arena of the Hunger Games, and that we would soon follow. So afraid that her name would be called to slaughter that it took a nightmare to remind me that, at last, it might be mine instead. Afraid that, even if it happened, she'd make the wrong choice and take my place. We'd never survive without her, if Katniss died in the games.

It'd much more likely be her. Every bit of the odds is stacked against Katniss, I almost can't believe she's dodged it all so far. Every year, there's one more slip; every year, anyone's doom becomes more and more likely, but there's a catch. There was only one catch, and that was the tesserae. It's an unfathomably, odiously bad deal. One more slip in the bowl for one year's worth of grain and oil. It was our sustenance for four years, and I swear, it probably came more from our district than District 9 or 11. That's where mass agriculture is supposed to happen, not here. There's good grain and actual oil out there somewhere, but it isn't the tesserae rations. The oil ration burns almost as well as coal dust. The grain ration tastes about the same way, and I can't say it's that much healthier either.

No, of course the rations aren't supposed to be very high quality. That's why they exist for the most desperate families. But "food" that has nearly the edibility of solid petroleum should not be an acceptable standard anywhere.

There was this one incident, a long time ago, that almost faded from memory but still gets joked about in school, where for an entire year, all Capitol documents had every occurrence of the numbers 10 and 12 swapped. For the entire year, the most popular use of District 10 livestock in the Capitol was ritual sacrifice by incineration in coal furnaces. Metal production was severely hindered, and it turns out District 2 was blamed for the setback. But that wasn't the best part.

The best result of the incident was the most popular use of District 12 coal in the Capitol. I have to get this right: it was taught- in a sense- as "Government sponsored mass assassination by unidentified toxic agents." It goes without saying that coal can be quite lethal.

When ingested.

The point is that coal, and anything that has the nutritious value of coal, should not be an acceptable source of food, and the Capitol should know this. I sigh as get dressed in the same skirt and blouse Katniss wore exactly four years ago. It only now occurs to me that she was really big, even back then. Her old clothes are such a loose fit on me that when I show mom, I can find the slightest trace of a smile on her face as she goes to find pins to hold it all together. It still looks silly, and I can't figure out how the tuck the back in. Nonetheless, it's one small comfort today to know that she made it out so far, and I can, too.

These good thoughts persist all through the morning as mom and I take inventory on the medical supplies. The basics: cloth, adhesives and disinfectants, are all in standard supply. That is, there's not much, but not much less than we're used to. There's certainly enough to make do, which means I'll be restocking within a few days. There's also a surprise in the inventory. For once, there's an abundance of herbs, enough to make painkiller remedies for dozens of people should the unnerving case that they'd all need it arise.

It's all we can do as an alternative to morphling. It's not as strong a sedative, and consequently not as addictive, nor as effective a narcotic, but our herbal remedies are sometimes called "budget morphling," because the real deal is expensive. Far too expensive for a family in the Seam to use regularly, though mom has a small amount of it kept for dire emergencies hidden somewhere in the house.

I've never looked for it; we've never really needed it, but it's there. I know there's some way to make morphling, since it has to come from somewhere, although here in District 12, the morphling supply comes exclusively from the Capitol. It's one of the very few things they can give us to make us dependent on them, one of the few things that we can't completely substitute with a medicine of our own. And it's something that I can't afford to let Buttercup even have a chance of stumbling across.

I see him, the lean, adorable cat that Katniss insists is unbearable to have around, reaching for a locked box in a cupboard. He's trying, that's for sure, and Katniss would no doubt take this moment to point out how stupid he looks jumping up and down trying to claw at a piece of wood. He's not in danger of actually getting any purchase on that box, let alone pulling it anywhere, but I creep up on him as he's in his single minded focus and grab him by his once worm-infested tummy. Buttercup looks so cute with all his legs extended in the box's direction, I giggle until he relaxes him limbs and rests his head against my arms.

I set him down on the ground near a leg of the kitchen table. I glance by at an empty bowl and smile, knowing Katniss got the gift I left for her. I head outside to the little shack behind our house where Lady sleeps, just pausing to ask mom, "Is there anything I should go out to get?"

She's still going over the supplies, having moved on from medicine to food, which we're eternally short on. "No, Prim, not today," is her reply. Katniss is certainly in the woods with Gale, so she'll just as certainly be bringing something back. It's also reaping day; there's not much chance that anyone would have their shops open. I don't blame them, but as healers in the District, we have to be ready for business all the time.

The goat shack looks like it could use some work. That is to say, it looks to be in just a tiny bit worse condition than our house, because it could all stand to use some work. Lady's still asleep as I approach, and I sit down next to her, stroking her soft fur until she moves. In my caress with Lady, I can tell that it's nearly time to shear her fur for winter clothes. She finally stirs, perhaps to let me know she's awake and has been for a few minutes now.

I grab the tin bucket and begin pumping water in it to rinse it out of any dirt it may have gotten and dust it almost certainly has. The pump is tough today; it may have something to do with the underground well it's connected to. There wasn't much rain until a few days ago, so the well might have slightly dried out. It's on its way back.

After that, I cup my hands in the cold water and let it fall on Lady to clean her up as well. I pour just a little bit on her and rub her as stiffly as I can. Just around when she starts baaing is good. From front to back, and rubbing outwards from where I splash her, I repeat until the water in the bucket is only a part of an inch deep- less than an eighth. I dump the last of the water, the dirtiest of it, on the ground and prepare to gather milk.

* * *

I come inside with the milk to find mom starting a fire in the pit. For water, I assume, and take the other bucket out to the pump. This one's kept inside and nearly always clean; we only ever put water in it. It's made of two metals: steel and copper, and is one of the most valuable things in our entire house. I bring back the water and leave it near the fire pit before going to help mom bottle the milk in glass jars. That counts. It's the least we can do for Katniss when she comes back to give her a warm bath. Well, that and it's reaping day, so she has to look presentable.

That water doesn't have to be heated until a little before noon, though, since she's not going to be back until then. And until then, we've essentially got free time on our hands, so I pick up some of the papers from life science class and compare it to mom's plant journal. I end up lost, looking back and forth between the notes on katniss roots in the book and the papers. _As long as we have this, we'll never starve._ There wasn't a thing in the world that could be more true than that.

The time finds its way back into order when Buttercup walks up to and leans against my legs. I shake my fixation on the plants right on the page about poppy plants to reach down and pet him on the head and scratch behind the ears. I notice something on my school papers as I'm scrunched over: poppy plants were once harvested for a narcotic drug called morphine. It really can't exist coincident with morphling; it has to have some connection. Poppies were also harvested for their seeds and oil in culinary uses, notably its use in some kinds of bread. I wonder whether the Mellark bakery uses poppy plants in its cooking.

There are a few notes on poisonous plants towards the end as well, detailing what to avoid. Most of them are flashy and colorful, but a few insidious ones are more muted in coloration. Nightlock in particular is a nasty trap that looks almost indistinguishable from blackberries except for the blood red juices. It's a lot like nightshade, another similarity too stark to be a coincidence, and when I see hemlock, I wonder just how the two could be combined.

Katniss used to look through mom's book with me, and I'm suddenly reminded that it's probably around noon, so I move the bucket over the still-burning fire pit. This prompts mom to look for something for Katniss to wear, and what she comes up with is a lovely light blue dress that must have come from her days at the apothecary. She finds shoes to match, and the anticipation of seeing Katniss dressed nice chews at me from inside as I bring Buttercup up onto my lap.

At last, she's back, carrying a sack of fish, warm bread and fruits and vegetables, and mom and I help her to a warm bath to wash off all the dirt and dust from the woods and the Hob. There's something to be said about her stoicism, and we let Katniss handle her bath herself. I go to get a towel, and I hear her ask mom, "Are you sure?" She's seen the dress laid out for her.

"Of course," mom tells her as I bring a towel back. "Let's put your hair up too." Katniss sits on the mattress after putting on the dress as mom dries and braids her hair.

Her image in the cracked mirror is such a radical change from normal, every bit of my anticipation has been met. "You look beautiful," I say in a hushed voice and with only part of my breath.

"And nothing like myself." She hugs me, putting her arms around me like a suit of armor, or a shield. A shield in front of me that leaves her exposed. There's a tension in her embrace, a rare sign of stress and fear that she displays just for a moment. She loosens her arms and says, "Tuck your tail in, little duck," smoothing out the ruffle of the blouse behind me. The part that just wouldn't tuck in no matter what mom or I did.

"Quack," I say, giggling.

Katniss answers me, "Quack yourself," with a light laugh. A sound that doesn't come out of her often. "Come on, let's eat," she says kissing my forehead.

Mom has refilled the steel bucket with water for a fish and vegetable stew for supper and placed it over the fire pit. The bread and strawberries will be saved for the same time, leaving us to a lunch of things we're intimately familiar with: tesserae grain bread and goat milk. After lunch, at one o'clock, we head out to town square.

It's one of the few nice places in the district, even having a festive feeling to it on the more festive of days. There are shops all around and when they're open and buzzing with bartering and conversation, it really feels different from the Seam. But today, in spite of all the decoration, with Capitol cameras settled like vultures, it is the worst place in the world.

And as I take my place in the back, I find myself on the edge, dividing the circle of victims from the circle of grievance. But there are those who never grieve. Those whose minds and hearts are so long gong that all they care about now is money. Those that bet on what kind of children will get called up to be tributes. That's the worst of it, that there exist people who care so little about their own district and neighbors. To me, there's not a thing more despicable; not even the Hunger Games themselves can claim to be something so overwhelmingly present in such close proximity.

I'm roped off at the back of town square where I can barely see the district's escort, Effie Trinket. She's dressed like castor bean poison, in bright pink hair, green suit and white smile. To her side was the mayor and an empty chair. The two are talking about something, possibly the absence of whoever is supposed to be in that chair, but when two o'clock comes, the mayor steps up to give a history speech.

It's marginally interesting to hear where it diverges from the history we're taught in school, as all the cataclysms he lists off: the droughts, floods, storms and fires, contain no mention of that asteroid strike from nearly a century back. The result of disaster was war, and of subjugation, tyranny. There was a rebellion, in which the last of the thirteen districts was obliterated by the first use of nuclear weapons in Panem. The Dark Days, this rebellion was called, saw another cycle of war, subjugation and tyranny.

This second era of tyranny was the Hunger Games. IS the Hunger Games. "It is both a time for repentance and a time for thanks," the mayor concludes. He then unwittingly reminds us of our eternally bleak chances of surviving the games by reading aloud the names of all the past victors.

Both of them.

"Juno Blackie and Haymith Abernathy." Haymitch stumbles onto the stage completely hammered with alcohol, and in the ensuing farce, he gives Effie Trinket a hug. Nobody can guess why. The mayor scrambles to keep control of the situation by calling Effie up to do the reapings.

"Happy Hunger Games!" she cheerfully announces as though it were really nothing more than a game. Like it really was the annual sporting competition we all had to behave like it was. Her accent, distinctive of the Capitol, truly shines through, "And may the odds be _ever _in your favor!" There's something almost melodic to her voice in the way she builds up to the one word she wishes to accent most. When she takes over, there is a video displaying, further emphasizing the points the mayor already made. Just more Capitol propaganda about the horrors of war.

But they're right. As the bullets zoom across the screen and the white flashes of bomb blasts wash away the images, and as the sounds of the myriad of explosions drown out any would-be noise within miles, it almost, almost feels like the violence comes out of the silver and into the weary gray of town square. This time, nobody collapses, and I can see Effie Trinket clearly enough to make note that she's reciting every word of the video, and even preempting some of it in excitement.

It dawns on me immediately that the propaganda is not for the Districts, but for the Capitol itself. And finally, when the video is finished, she turns back to the crowd to make the reapings happen. "Ladies first!" as is her tradition. She reaches into the bowl of girls' names and takes her time to choose one slip of paper.

The dynamics of the sound in town square are dramatic. Before, you couldn't hear yourself think. But now, after one final collective breath from the whole population of eight thousand, there was nothing to be heard except the wind.

Until Effie Trinket reads out the name: "Saige Camphor!"

* * *

AN: Well, now that that's out of the way, I hope you've enjoyed the first chapter of "The Winter Frost" and the very first part of what I hope will be the "Catching Cold" series.


	2. Foxglove

All rights to Suzanne Collins, author of the The Hunger Games trilogy.

* * *

_I met Saige once, when she came to us looking for a remedy for her little sister, Lily. One day in a harsh winter, two years ago while Katniss was out in the woods, Saige came looking for a treatment for pneumonia. She was sixteen then and just as desperate as we were, and pneumonia was a hard thing to treat when the whole district was so cold._

_It really was so cold that winter, I almost thought Katniss and Gale couldn't pull through in the woods since all the animals would be hiding in hibernation. But as surely as mom and I ran to bring Lily what medicine we could procure, just as surely did Katniss and Gale manage to hunt what sparse game there was. There's a great sense of community in District 12; nobody ever gives up on anyone else, family or otherwise. It's our responsibility as decent people to help each other out._

_Eighteen this year, so close to freedom, Saige just didn't escape the reaping, and it's a terrible thing. I had Katniss this year. Lily will be facing her first reaping alone the next. I remember that day we went over to help, we brought food with us, and it almost seemed like they didn't recognize what they were eating. The entire Camphor family is as responsible as can be, but the conditions of poverty are just so bad that access to a source of food like the woods is a blessing I came to realize was much more than a lot of people had._

_Saige and her family lived almost exclusively on the tesserae rations. I can't imagine what else was happening; those rations weren't enough on their own for anyone to survive off of. There had to be another source of income, however meager, that her family had. But I never figured out what it was, and on the occasions I visited them at night, her wasn't there._

_And I shudder to think Lily might disappear the same way._

But there was one group that thinks differently. The racketeers, who even now look at the most malignant curse to find a profit for themselves. There's no reconciling that. I hear one of them, barely hiding his laughter only so that his companions don't become enraged with jealousy. "Right on the money," one of them says to him, and that enrages me.

That, the racketeering and the gambling on people's lives- children's lives- is the worst of Panem's society. Those who can look at the Capitol's atrocities and are motivated to think, "How can I make it even worse? How can I get in on it?" None of them have anything on the line, save possibly for their pride, and I don't know how they can bear to live with it.

The life of a soulless leech is nothing to be proud of.

Effie Trinket, in her too high-pitched and sharp-accented voice, continues, "And now for the boy tribute!" She more quickly this time snatches a piece of paper from the other bowl, full of boys' names, and I have no doubt in my mind that Katniss is worried about Gale. Forty-two slips is nothing to sneeze at, and I was worried enough about my slip, all in its lonesome. The odds really are terrible no matter what.

From her toxic clutches, Effie Trinket reads the name of the boy tribute: "Peeta Mellark!" The boy from the bakery Katniss and I pass by every day. The one who stares at her sometimes after school. Perhaps I'm being harsh on Katniss to say Peeta's the only one doing it, but if that's not the case, he's the only one who's obvious about it.

There's always some dark memory for me to drift to, and dad's death is by far the worst. We all still shudder at the way he was completely incinerated in the mine explosion those four years back. The news of it was all we got, and part of the news was that there wasn't going to be a body to bury. Not a body to be had, not even pieces, morbid as it may be. All that came with the news bearer was enough coin to last a month before mom was to find a job.

In Katniss's hands, it lasted two, and after that, the starvation came in the beginning of spring. It was a long countdown to the next winter; dad pulled, almost carried us through the last. None of us really knew what we'd do without him. Even Katniss, determined as she was, was drained and hopeless. It got darkest on a rainy day, shortly before her twelfth birthday, when she took my baby clothes to the Hob to trade for food of any sort. She was out a long time; we were worried she might have caught a disease we were simply in no condition to be able to treat.

When she finally returned home, safe and sound, she brought two loaves of bread, charred on the outside but perfect on the inside. It was, almost literally, the first thing we'd eaten in weeks.

She had also brought back hope.

From that very moment she returned, dripping wet and shivering with the icy rain that was winter's last grasp on our spirits, we saw the way forwards. And I just can't shake the feeling that Peeta had something to do with it.

There's a source of thunderous applause behind me as Effie Trinket presents Saige and Peeta. A thunderous, odious and hollow applause that can only be coming from the one racketeer who must be thinking that he's some sort of prophet. An oracle whose profits come solely from the souls of others. And it's not just his clapping, but his laughter, too, that drives me insane. As the mayor stands to give a speech so somber that the rest of the district turns their heads to listen, there's a maniacal riot in the back.

He knew them! He knew them both and didn't care nor cry. Everyone else could stay silent in heartfelt respect for Saige and Peeta, and comprehend the tragedy in the mayor's tone, but not him.

He has earned my ire.

* * *

"How much longer?"

It's official. Gale has just gotten the order to go to work in the mines, although he was lucky enough to be given a grace period. "A week at least," he tells me, "but it's probably not going to be a big deal until the games end. The district can't force me to go to work if the Capitol's forcing me to watch their horror show."

I laugh at the one thing the Capitol did that's working out in my favor. I have to wait until I stop, because the very next thing I tell him is the most serious thing I've ever said in my life: "So when you're out with Katniss anyway, can you bring me all the poppy plants you can find?"

Gale curiously looks at me for an eternity. He's trying to figure out what I want with poppy plants, since it's a plant he's always passed before without acknowledging. All the better that he's never paid attention to it, for if he'd studied it as thoroughly as he has fruit-bearing plants, he might be able to tell right away. He puzzles it through, mulling over everything he knows about poppies out loud to see if I react.

The gravity of my face doesn't let up even for a moment to poke fun at the frustration showing on his. Either he's frustrated that his gambit failed or that he just can't figure out what I want, and when he finally caves, "What are you going to do with poppy seeds?" only then do I loosen myself to a smile.

"I'm going to take it to the Mellark bakery. See if I can trade it for a way to get food." Sort of.

My real intent is to make morphling. There's very little I can say to Gale about it, but I want to make and sell morphling. What I can explain, and do, is this: if he's going into the mines, it absolutely follows that he's not going hunting anymore. Without him, Katniss can't keep up with what it will take to feed both our families, for any number of reasons. The most practical among them is that just by being there, Gale doubles the amount of stuff they can carry back to into the district.

He's quick to follow up on how vital he is to his and Katniss's hunting trips. I'm glad Gale at least understands that there's a problem to be solved, even if he can never know just how I intend to solve it. Then he picks up on the Mellark family, and he frowns a bit at the realization that Peeta had a longstanding crush on Katniss: "Do you really think working with them is a good idea?" he asks. "Is there something they can do that you think I can't?"

There are plenty of things I need to do, and things I need to go smoothly. Dealing with Gale's pride is not something I need to do, and it's certainly nothing I ever want to do. "That's not the point!"

"So what is?" he demands.

"The point is I need you to help me help them help me help us all. Can you do this? Just bring me any poppy plants you find?" There are people passing by behind our house where Gale and I are talking. Well, arguing, at any rate. They give us a glance and then keep going, but they're all shocked to hear me raise my voice like that. "Just do this for Katniss, alright? You can help her out, and I promise she'll never know a thing about it."

Now I can't tell a thing about the tone of the thoughts racing through his mind, but the content of those thoughts has something to do with giving to my sister in a way she can't pay back. Gale lightens up to hear me say that, and agrees, "I'll do it. All the poppies you need," as he gives me a quick hug. His timing really is impeccable, because just as I turn around, Katniss arrives back from her business. "All done at the Hob?" Of course Gale notices her too.

"Just stocking for tomorrow," she answers him. Typical of Katniss, she's already back to her woods shirt and pants and dad's old leather jacket. "Prim, supper's almost ready." She looks to Gale as I nod my understanding and start heading inside. I linger just long enough to hear, "You want to eat with us?" He doesn't. Family matters.

Supper on reaping day is normally a time for celebration, and Katniss has gone far out of her way to make sure we eat as well as possible. Fish and green stew is an enviable feast in district 12, and almost unheard of in the Seam. By all accounts, she could make that pot of stew last us three days or more, but this is all for tonight, as a sort of thanks for the odds being in our favor today.

It's a rich stew, due in large part to the fish and greens having come directly from nature this very morning. I could never forget this- how filling it is, how much effort it took to gather and prepare everything- and then we bring out the bread. It's the fresh loaf of the wispiest, fluffiest bread I've ever seen, and the very first loaf of anything I've ever seen through. Katniss makes sure to show me the hole in the middle, where she tells us Gale shot an arrow through it.

The warmth of its first fire is long gone, but the loaf is none the poorer for it. Mom cuts a few slices of the bakery bread, so soft that a hot stick of butter could cut though it like a hot knife through butter. We eat the bread with a chilly, sweet cream of mixed strawberries and blackberries. In tandem with the stew, this treat- there's nothing else to call it, but the closest match would be the cakes on display in the window of the Mellark's bakery- makes me savor every bit of the taste. It also reminds me of the work I have up ahead.

* * *

Viewing the Hunger Games is mandatory effective immediately, even though it's barely been a day since the reapings. The trains are arriving in the Capitol now, and the tributes are getting the chance to make their first impressions on the audience. How much it matters, I can't really say. Even less so who catches my attention most. There's the girl from district 11, Rue, who's about my age. I can't imagine how it all went there, and I sincerely hope there wasn't anyone so calloused as the gamblers here in 12.

Gale's arrival alone, with a load of poppy plants, just like he promised, brings me outside the house so mom can't hear. There's something on his mind. "I had to leave Katniss alone at the Hob to get you this," he says to me with a scathing tone. "To make sure she didn't know." Contrary to his voice, there's a look of concern in his face, because trusting someone blindly is something he's learned over half a decade to avoid. "Prim, how much of a difference is this bread going to make?" he asks me.

"It'll all be worth it," is all I can say. "You'll see."

"I- it's just," he stutters, unable to piece together what he wants to say, "I don't like tricking Katniss like this. We've been out in the woods so long, I feel like she's my sister as much as yours." _Come on, Gale! Thanks for the poppies! I'll take it from here! _I want to tell him, screaming at the top of my lungs. "Doesn't she at least deserve to know what you're doing?"

"That can't happen, Gale," I caution. "Thanks for the poppies. I'll take it from here." _So close_.

He leaves with unusually tense and heavy breath, but without a sound; I can't tell how far he is. I spare the television one last glance, catching a glimpse of some of the mentors. District 6, called the "Morphlings" after the drug they're addicted to, and the one I'm about to concoct. They're incoherent, in dreadful condition, and they look hollow. Their haunting image embeds itself in my mind as I bring the poppy plants over to the bakery in a box in my toy wagon. I'm impressed it fits in there.

Katniss and I used to walk by the bakery every day before and after school, even though it wasn't strictly on the route, but it wasn't out of the way, either. I find its windows covered with shutters today, and I realize that they're still in mourning for Peeta. I awkwardly stand in front of the door for minutes until one of them notices me and comes outside to greet me. "Hi, Mr. Mellark," I answer. "I'm Primrose Everdeen. May I talk to you for a minute or two?"

"Right here?" He's wary of what I could have to say that I don't want to rest of his family to hear. Rightfully so, but he seems to remember Katniss and how desperate we were years ago. Knowing me by association, he faintly raises his hand to signal he wants to help. "Okay," he assents, "I'll do whatever I can. Times are tough all around without Peeta."

"Can I trust you to keep a secret?" I launch right into some things that I need him to understand, and which I don't care so much whom he tells, just to gauge his response. "Katniss's friend Gale got an order for mining work as soon as the mandatory games viewing finishes. I don't think we'll be able to feed ourselves anymore without him unless you can help me with something."

"Anything I can do, Prim, I'm willing to help." He looks at the box and asks what's in it, and whether its contents have anything to do with my request. They have everything to do with it.

"I have a box of poppy plants," I tell him.

"You want to bake bread?"

"No," I say. "That's the secret: I want to make morphling."

Mr. Mellark's jaws visibly drop. He shudders in his voice, unsure of himself for some reason, unsure of who he's talking to. "Morphling?" he inquisitively repeats. "Prim," he starts. "I don't know how to make that, I'm sorry."

"I think I do. I just need a place and equipment to do it with. The fire pit at home is not going to be sufficient." It sounds perfectly logical. It's an admittedly tough formula, and it requires some degree of technology. This is district 12, so it doesn't require all that much, but more than there is in our house. I've already told him this is the big secret, so telling him that I need his stove to Katniss and mom don't find out it a useless point now.

He wants to do it. He wants to find any excuse he can to convince him that it's worth the risks, and his arguments against it fall off in intensity. "What if the Peacekeepers find out?" If they find out, given how corrupt they are, they'll want in on it. It might be the best thing that could happen for the Peacekeepers to find out we're making this.

"It's a profitable market," I say. The only other supply of this comes straight from the Capitol and it's never enough, be that for medical purposes or for addicts. "I'll split everything fifty-fifty with you, if you'd just help me out." His face is contorted in a painful struggle of two parts of his mind. If not for the coal dust, I might be able to smell the smoke coming out of his furiously racing thoughts, flipping back and forth: "Do it!" "Don't do it!" "You have to! It's for the family!" "You'll get your whole family killed if you do this!"

I can see a bit of their television screen through the doorway. Haymitch is on, looking for sponsors already. "Peeta needs help," I whisper, and as soon as I do, the smoke clears. Mr. Mellark makes up his mind in a flash.

"I'm in."

When I come in, I learn that they've been keeping a sort of vigil for so long, that they haven't eaten anything. Mr. Mellark is brilliant on his feet and offers to take them all out somewhere, so as not to eat out of the blood, sweat and tears of their son. He mouths to me, "one hour," and as soon as the door shuts, I get to work.

I crush all the poppies and look through all the closets for cleaning chemicals. Mostly, what I need is sulfur to extract the morphine from the poppies, and then I can begin boiling water to process it. There's a few bottles of cleaning acids, some full, some partially empty. I take a full bottle and put just a little bit of it in the heating water before turning my attention to the extraction process.

It's tedious and repetitive; I end up extracting the same handful of crushed poppies at least a dozen times, but when it's all done, I put the extract in the water and wait for the morphine to separate from the other chemicals.

Within my one hour time frame, I have a batch of real, natural morphine. I even had time to find little glass bottles to package it. No syringes, though, it's too much to ask a bakery to carry a bunch of those around. It's ridiculous to think about this as a rewarding process, but I have full confidence that, if I just prepare some actual solvents next time around, my stuff will be better than the Capitol's wholly synthetic formula.

Still, actual morphine is going to make a lasting impression on anyone willing to try it. I take all of my product and place it in the box in my wagon. There's a knock on the door that instantly drives my heart rate up, only to calm to normal when I see it's Mr. Mellark. Mouth agape, he looks at the kitchen area mess, and he might think a bomb went off there.

He absent-mindedly pats me on the shoulder and mutters, "I'll clean this up, Prim. You do what you have to do." I'm grateful for his help, in getting the space for me and cleaning it up when I finish, and I'm surprised he doesn't make any mention about his cut. That end of the deal is on me.

I make a similarly absentminded thanks and farewell, and I make my way to the Hob. One of two places Katniss never took me. A place she considered too dangerous for me. The Hob used to be a warehouse for coal, abandoned after the Capitol decided coal trains should run directly to the mines to save some time. At least, that's what I suspect. The place is so big, it had to a warehouse, and I can't think of any other use for a warehouse in district 12 other than storing the Capitol's coal.

There's an ancient woman sitting next to a large cauldron, almost like a witch, shouting about beef stew. Everything else goes downhill from there, but I have no case to condemn any of their practices. I was here to participate in the depths of the cesspool.

There were displays of tattered clothing, tables among tables of halves of shirts and single pants, not pairs. Some stands had relatively higher quality clothing, including a leather jacket that looked suspiciously like dad's. No, I shake that thought out entirely. That's something Katniss would never part with. Damaged as it may be, it belongs with her. It brings out something in her, some special regard and fond memories like mom has in her apothecary dresses. Odd as it may be, Katniss looks much more like a girl in dad's jacket than in any dress anyone could make her wear.

Oh, and there's alcohol. It just can't be a proper black market environment without alcohol. There's more liquor than clothes here, and an even wider range of qualities for this thing that really matters. It makes sense that Katniss comes here so often. There's a bigger market for everything here than there is in town unless someone can fill a specific niche.

Past the islands of bad breath and drowning, there are gambling nests, and in the dim light in the warehouse, I can just barely make out the face of the racketeer from reaping day. I suddenly remember the Morphlings from district 6. My mind flashes back to the miserable looking state of their lives, and impulsively, I talk to the racketeer. "You, uh," I look down at the needle set by his gaming chips, "you use morphling?" I ask.

"Why you asking, dearie?" Oh man, the wretched smell! He's got to have a bottle of liquor at the leg of his chair, or five, his speech is so slurred, I'm glad he only make one 's' sound in that sentence. "You're not getting your hands on mine!" he roars with laughter. That same, awful laughter during the mayor's speech, except this time it's like he's spitting the alcohol back up and drooling it out at the same time.

"I might have something better," I tell him. "Something more natural and wild. Perfect for someone like you." I'm about to open the box when I add, "If you think you can afford it."

"If _I_ can afford it!" he shouts. Everyone's looking at us now as he slams a sack of coins on the table. A sack big enough that it would take up the entire wagon. "Just one thing now, girlie. Just who do you think you are that you think _I_ can't afford what you're selling?"

I think about this long and hard. "Foxglove," I call myself. "But it looks like I presumed too much." I set the whole box closed on the table and snatch the sack of coins. "This," I give it a shake, "should be just enough. Enjoy it." And with that, I load the money into my cart and leave with everyone's attention.

* * *

Katniss arrives back from the woods first today, which makes me think she and Gale are trading days to stay behind in the Hob. She comes back with food and her first story about the place. "Someone died at the Hob," she announces. "Someone named Colton Rudgi, apparently he just became rich and died from an overdose."

"A morphling OD?" mom asks, concerned why she didn't hear about this sooner.

"No," Katniss responds, "not exactly morphling, something kind of like it. His wife, Erica, died too. I asked what could have caused it, but from what they told me, he may have been poisoned instead. Everyone at the Hob just said 'foxglove'."

I drop my gaze and instinctively turn towards the back wall. My mind drifts off of the most random secret compartment in Lady's shack where I hid the money and onto the fact that I just killed the racketeer and his wife. I just can't believe it. I should feel much worse about this.

* * *

AN: I can't possibly keep up this chapter size nor this update pace.

A few interesting things: Foxglove is a poisonous plant, which Katniss should logically know about, and Prim learned about in the book.

Ricin is a toxin that is deadly to most animals, but ducks have an inexplicable resistance to it.

This is going to get really dark really fast.

Stay with me, everyone.


	3. Clove

All rights to Suzanne Collins, author of the The Hunger Games trilogy.

* * *

_As the whitewash filter dulls the painful light of the sun, Peeta's first featured appearance on screen shows him falling over himself, running a desperate stern chase. He collapses against wall of heavy snow that blocks his way forward, screaming without regard for his pursuers. There's only one path through the gorge, anyway, and if he doesn't keep going he'll eventually be caught. He's exhausted, he's over-exerted himself running and now he's cornered against a barrier he can no longer overcome and an enemy he can no longer escape._

_Peeta reaches into his bag and takes a out a pickaxe to start breaking pieces of the ice from the wall. The little shattered pieces don't melt in his hands, but without a way to piece them all back together, he sighs at the futility of his first plan, be that whatever it may._

_Peeta starts picking away at the corner of the wall, trying to dig a tunnel to escape through and scatter the ice fragments into the crawl space to prevent pursuit. The bottom of the ice wall gives way much faster, but leaves smoother pieces. Peeta realizes that he won't be able to plug the breach, but has to keep digging to at least make it through. He swings the pickaxe with increasing fervor, and he eventually hits a hard surface which snaps the pick by the neck._

_White wisps blow across the camera field of view and dramatically alter the sunlight. A long shadow creeps up behind Peeta, and when he sees it, he picks up the pickaxe head and crawls down into his tunnel to break through manually. The camera switches again to follow him on the other side of the wall, where he slowly walks towards something just off the side of the screen. The screen pans with his advance to reveal a gigantic, silver battering ram powered by a simple machine at the top of an ice shelf._

* * *

"I don't think it's safe anymore." I can barely hear Katniss under my thoughts about the racketeer. I recall the disheveled way he looked and the disgusting way he smelled. And laughed, for that matter. All of it together almost made me want to throw up when I was there, telling him that fake name. "Foxglove," Katniss says, and I know I missed something. "Mom, have you ever treated foxglove poisoning before?"

Mom has the look of determination on her face that usually means she's treating a patient. Now, she's treating every single patient she'd ever had all at once in a fast play-it-forward memory, concluding, "No, dear, I haven't. And poisoning and overdoses are two completely different problems, it'd be hard to confuse one for the other."

"So they were talking about a person?" she suggests. Katniss groans, putting her hand on her forehead. Being named for plants is a common thing in district 12. With just katniss roots and primrose flowers, there's the obvious fact that someone named "Foxglove" could very well exist. "What if Foxglove comes after me? Should I just stop going to the Hob?"

"No," I answer. "Don't stop." Mom looks at me, shocked at how quickly I answered. She has a much different set of fears than mine, and while she thinks the trade at the Hob is extremely helpful, we can still find a way to pull through without it. But there's something important they don't know, and that I have to be careful about telling them, "You're not in any danger, Katniss. There's no reason to leave it behind."

"Prim, how do you know that?" she and mom ask me together. Mom adds alone, "You sound so certain, there has to be something you know that we don't."

No, not now, this can't be happening already. "It's not that big a secret," I say dismissively with a little smile. "There's not one person in the district who's going to try to take advantage of you, Katniss. Everyone has the utmost respect for you, even in the Hob."

The light that was quickly draining from her eyes before returns as she looks up from the floor to me. All those years of trading there, all those years of hunting are not going to be broken by just one incident. Katniss is too strong for that. Black market trading is not going to be an issue for her after she spent the entire second part of her life either there or in the woods. But I have to add, "It has to be just you, you know?"

Mom looks away, preparing for the inevitable announcement of Gale's work in the mines. He only showed me the order, but mom always bore a seed of fear that he was going to go mine coal; she could have figured it out. Katniss never thinks about the mines, until I tell her, "Gale's going to be in the mines soon. He's going to be counting on you as soon as he's down there."

Katniss's mouth hangs agape and her mind runs off to do a million things at once. It tries to figure out how to deal with no longer having a hunting partner. She has to figure out how to bring enough to the Hob to sell. She's thinking about the explosion and how she'll never let that happen to Gale if she can help it. "How long have you known?" she's afraid that she can't do anything to help it, and I don't blame her.

"I've only known since yesterday," I tell her. "I don't know how long ago Gale got the order before he told me about it."

"Why didn't he tell me?!" she demands. Katniss deserves to know if her hunting partner and best friend can't stick around another month due to circumstances beyond their control. I don't why Gale didn't tell her a thing about it. Katniss deserves to know more than anyone, even Gale himself, if she needs to find a way to help feed his family. Even if he doesn't want that.

Even if I'm doing it all myself.

"He thought you'd worry about him," I tell Katniss. "Gale thought you'd put his needs over your own, and he's right. It's always been that way between you, but he didn't want it to be any more true than it already was." He certainly can't stand the fact than I'm not telling him about the morphine I'm selling. On his turf, no less. "If he tells you, be surprised that he does. He'll buy it," I finish with a smile.

She nods at me, "Then I guess the pressure's on. I have to head out now." She goes to hug mom, leaving one arm open for me that I run in to join. Katniss kisses my forehead as we're all clinging together, until it's time for her to go out to the woods.

"Go do what you do best," I call out to her, because she's already had the best luck there is.

Not a moment after she's out of sight, someone comes in to see mom about something urgent, by the looks of it. I walk towards an old, dusty box of medical supplies that we haven't used in years while mom goes to answer the door. If it's anything like I think it is, she'll want to bring the supplies over as soon as possible. As I bring it to her, I overhear something about a mine accident that crushed someone's legs. It's almost exactly what Katniss is afraid will happen to Gale.

Once mom leaves, and I'm left alone in the house, I find Buttercup poised to leap at a hole in the wall where some rats must live. Part of the wall is peeled, and it looks like he took a splinter somewhere in his body. I run and grab the first aid kit and a knife to patch him up. The way his focus breaks sometimes makes me laugh, and I sit down and pat his skin gently, searching for the splinter to pull it out. I spray a tiny bit of disinfectant on it and start cutting cloth for a bandage when I hear squeaking from inside the hole.

I hold Buttercup back with one hand and the knife above the hole in the other, plunging it down only the moment the rat pops out to scavenge the scarce food supply we have. I strike it in a painful organ, and the little creature writhes and spasms on the floor, trailing blood as it turns about one of its hind legs. In all appearances, I could probably heal it right back up. It wouldn't be too hard; it wouldn't take too many supplies.

"He's all yours," I tell Buttercup, and I go out to check on Lady. She's awake in her shack, after an uncomfortable night of sleep, most likely, and she's unnerved the moment she sees my hands covered in rat blood. Her shaken state reminds me that I ought to clean the knife, and I run back to retrieve it and put the first aid kit back in its place. Finally, it's time to wash my hands, the knife and the tin milk bucket. I have to pump the water twice for this alone, before it's time to give Lady a bath.

I've cleaned her up, noting once again that shearing time is almost here, but there's no milk today. I sigh and stroke her fur and laugh when she starts baaing and kicking at the wall behind her until she soon settles down for some sleep. If there's not going to be any milk today, so be it. I don't begrudge Lady for it, and take the sack of coins out of her shack. It feels just as heavy as when I put it there, which probably means nobody found it. Certainly, nobody has stolen from it.

Also, didn't money used to be made of paper? This bag is really heavy. There's at least ten thousand coins in that bag; it's going to last a long time, as long as mom and Katniss don't know where it came from or just how much it is. But I take it inside, because I don't want anyone to see me with this and think we've been hiding wealth all this time.

Buttercup has finished eating the rat and is quietly sleeping on the canvas mattress covering. All for the best, since I have to count out even shares of this for me and Peeta's dad and figure out how to get it from here to the bakery. And how to hide my share in the house, if it comes to that. I just put the bag somewhere outside of Buttercup's view for now, though, because I want to get to work on the organic catalyst for future morphine cooks.

I look through the supply of herbs, thankful for its being the one thing we have plenty of in this house, and take a variety of herbs to grind and mix into a single catalyst. There's a lot of pressing involved, extracting the essence of each herb by thoroughly crushing the plant fibers that contain them. When I finally have a solvent bottled in a small vial, I realize I have no way to test whether it works. I have to make an alcohol backup formula until I can check the organic one.

I journey back to the Hob with a small fraction of the money I left with last time, and from the instant I step inside the giant, repurposed warehouse, I feel everyone's eyes look briefly at me and then drop. All I can hear are my footsteps and the whispering and sighs of relief of the people I pass without a glance.

I walk straight to the liquor stand, and there's the faintest trace of stifled laughter as everyone remembers that I caused the first violent deaths here in years and profited from it. But when I stick around and announce my plan to purchase, the salesman gives an unmasked chuckle and says, "Foxy, girl, you about to go down the same path Colton did?" He called me "Foxy." He actually corrupted my name already. "The same path you sent him down?"

"I'm here to rebuild the path," I tell him. "The last batch wasn't up to snuff, and I'm here to make it better."

"Better?!" He's shocked. "Not up to snuff? It was sure good enough to snuff him, if you know what I mean." He lips move on without air to make sound, but from my slight ability to read his lips, he got "Foxglove" right this time. It's good for him that he learned to respect the name, or I'd have him walk the path of painlessness next.

"I know," I say, "and it can be better than that. That's where the liquor comes in. I cooked by hand last time and it was grossly inefficient. Alcohol helps catalyze the ingredients I use into the product Colton bought too much of." I reach into my pouch of coins, "So save the warnings and name your price. Two bottles is what I need."

"Well, lookee here! Little girl's a professor already!" Their laughter draws attention until they settle down, and the liquor dealer charges me a few coins for the two bottles.

"That's a little bit high," I argue. "I'm going to be off of it soon."

"That's what they all say, Foxglove. But if you're right, if you're going to be off of it soon, then paying a little bit extra now doesn't seem to big a problem, does it?"

I look at him, right at his face, just in time to see the grin there fade into doubt. I ask, "If everyone else would like to pay that much for liquor from now on, chip in and help me with this." Nobody tosses any more money my way, and I tell the dealer, "Nobody's going to pay that much. If they don't like drinking your alcohol enough to pay a little more for it, why should I even pay as much as they do?"

He mutters to himself, and what I think finally flips him is the memory of Colton and his wife. "Fine, just six coins for the two," he cedes to me, "but don't think the rest of you are getting a discount like that!" I leave the Hob with the liquor for a catalyst, the sound of disappointed groaning and change in my pouch.

He was even nice enough to throw a bag in for free.

* * *

Four thousand six hundred thirty-three. Four thousand six hundred thirty-four. Four thousand six hundred thirty-five and I'm interrupted in thought by a knock on the door. I shove one stack of coins back into the money bag and put the other in my liquor bag. I've already moved the alcohol and catalyst vial to a safe place in the cupboards, so there's not a single overtly placed sign of what I've been doing lately. I go to answer the door, and I find Gale just itching to get something off his chest.

"What were you doing?" he asks me. There's an accusatory tone in his voice I can't figure out the meaning of. "At the Hob. Prim, what were you doing there? Didn't Katniss tell you someone died there?"

Oh. That. "She told me he died at home-" I barely get out of my mouth before Gale cuts me off in a fervent tirade.

"As a direct result of something he bought at the Hob." Suddenly, he sighs, and turns abruptly apologetic, "You're a smart girl, Prim. You didn't put yourself in any danger there, did you?" He fidgets around, unable to keep any part of his body from shaking with something.

"I got some liquor hawked to me. I even got a discount, it was no big deal," I say.

"You got what?!" he bursts out again, prompting me to cover my head with my hands. Gale, we really don't need to be doing this right now. "Where is it? You couldn't have drank it all on the way back, right?"

"I know where it is," I assure him. "It still exists; I'm not going to drink it; I need it for the same reason as the poppy plants," which we both now realize he had in his hands, just like he promised he would bring as often as possible. "I'm going to cook with it."

"What kind of cook needs liquor and poppies?" he wonders, looking around and locking eyes with the bags. His train of thought crashes and he asks, "What's in the bags?" and he has me cornered. If I lie to him, he'll check. If I say nothing, he'll check.

"There's ten thousand coins in there total," I tell him. "I sold that Colton Rudgi guy the morphine he and his wife overdosed on."

"Morphling?" he asks, astonished and in complete disbelief. "There's not enough morphling in the district for you to go around selling it."

"Morphine," I correct. "With an 'i-n-e.' There used to be none of it in the district until I made some. And I sold it." I act boastful about something I ought to be ashamed of. And I watch Gale's face transform from incredulous disbelief to being torn between admiration and terror. Gale was more subject to violence than Katniss, and so less inclined to put me in for killing two people who he thought probably deserved it.

That and he was no friend to the Peacekeepers who served as the authorities here. At least, not to the ones who wouldn't want in on this sort of thing.

Gale bends down on his knees by the bags and taps them to check their content. He had his doubts before. When he taps on over forty pounds of metal through a cloth covering, there's no more room for doubt in his mind. Paralyzed by the realization of what I've done under his nose when he gets up, he stares blankly at the wall. When he can move, he asks me, "And that's what you need to keep Katniss from knowing?"

I nod yes, "Neither she nor mom can ever know about this, Gale. Once you're in the mines, Katniss won't know that to do anymore. She just can't feed nine people on her own. Especially not during winter. You're going to have one day off every week you're down there. I know you'll spend it out in the woods, and I need those poppy seeds no matter what."

"I promise," he says to me. "I'll help you every way I can."

"Thanks." I want to run up and hug him, but there's a lot of stuff to bo done. "Really quick, can you move some money from one bag to the other until they're about even?" I don't mention that part of it is for the Mellark family in thanks for our partnership, but Gale can probably piece it together. And, just in case he does, I tell him, "While you're at it, feel free to take a cut for yourself. For your part in getting the poppies. You deserve it."

As he gets to it, and with the clinking of coins in the ambience, I look for a place I can reasonably hide this money at a moment's notice. When it eventually comes time to fix this house up, that's going to be a crucial consideration. But for now, without a dedicated nook for the bags, and unable to just hide them in the cupboard, I take a look at the dresser, one of the few pieces of furniture we have, and decide to put the bugs under the space there.

Gale and I take the bags over to the dresser just as there's a knock on the door. The bags are in the most conspicuous spot they could possibly be. We pat them down and flatten them out as much as we can and push them underneath moments before mom comes in with a group of Peacekeepers behind her. All I need to do is not panic. The Peacekeepers don't know a thing about me or my involvement with the Foxglove dealer they might have heard of.

"Games are on," one of them announces. "Viewership is mandatory effective in five minutes. Anyone found roaming the streets then," he both tips his head towards Gale and in indication that Katniss still isn't home, "will be arrested for disobeying a Capitol order." Katniss got busted for this once. The way it had been reported was that she was also found with potentially subversive goods which were confiscated.

She came home that very same day with a hefty profit, escorted by a Peacekeeper and telling him, "If it's all the same with you, I'm going to do it again, tomorrow." The Peacekeeper just smiled and laughed. People like him were the reason Katniss was, more or less, immune to the law of district 12. Not that district 12 law was particularly strict.

Capitol law, however, is much more harsh, especially where it doesn't affect the Capitol in any way to give a destructive order. Mandatory viewing of the Hunger Games is the manifestation of the standard of waste in the Capitol, forcing us all the stop working in order to watch people die. As entertainment.

The Peacekeepers scan the room and order Gale to leave our house and return to his own. "Your family is going to want you around," one of them with a fiery head of hair reasons. He seems to know Gale; Gale certainly knows him better than I do, and whispers something indistinct to me as he leaves. His hands aren't in his pockets, and I hear the lack of the jingling noise that would indicate he took his fair cut. Too typical of him, to refuse anything he could that he didn't earn himself.

I went to turn on the television set, reserved solely for the mandatory viewing periods of the Hunger Games every year. There was nothing else to see, and everything else to do. And, more often than not except for right now, no electricity for it. The famous and seemingly eternal Caesar Flickerman was on alongside Claudius Templesmith, the announcer of almost equal prestige as Caesar.

His color this year is a cool blue, as if to reflect the tundra arena last year that saw nearly all the tributes freeze to death. Poking fun at the Head Gamemaker, Seneca Crane, for a job truly well botched up, Caesar nevertheless serves as a reminder that he has to do a better job this time around. He's reviewing some of the highlights of the ceremony so far, including, most notably, Peeta and Saige's parade outfit.

The Peacekeepers, still at the door, wonder aloud, "Where's Katniss?" One of them posits that she's still at the Hob. He's probably right, they concur, and send some of them to go get her and bring her back. The rest come inside to briefly watch the discussions just before the interviews happen, and they are just as impressed with our district's stylists as I am. A newcomer to the system had the bold idea to use fire to show off the product of district 12. Appropriately, his name was Cinna. There's so much to his design that I admire, and only one thing I can't help but abhor.

His incredible success makes me realize for the first time just how wasteful the Capitol and all its practices are.

Katniss returns with an escort and leftover game from her trip to the woods. She's muttering something, probably something along the lines of "I wasn't finished yet" based on the Peacekeepers' laughter after the says it. That or she was hawking the last of the pickings to them. I see one of them, the same one that knew Gale, take the last bit of squirrel from her for a few coins. A drop in the bucket compared to what I'm trying to conceal.

We give our farewells to the Peacekeepers and token thanks for bringing Katniss back. She just rolls her eyes and groans about how she could have gotten a better deal at her usual place. Everyone has a good laugh about it and the one Peacekeeper says something. "When Cray finds out about this," he warns, "he's going to have us patrolling the Meadow so we can buy all the good stuff off you first."

We sit down and watch, as is the law, as the interviews begin with Caesar and his painfully white smile against his deep blue suit and hair, and all that against the flashiest set of colors the television can produce. He's energetic, enough to get everyone in the Capitol cheering at their screens in excitement for what's coming next. Katniss, mom and I are not so easily impressed. As the tributes are given their final touch-ups backstage, Caesar brings up the matrix of their training scores.

The scores, of which there's usually not much range representation, must be inflated this year, because four tributes made a score of ten: the district 2 pair, Cato and Clove, Thresh, a gigantic boy from district 11, and Peeta. "Wow," Katniss sighs next to me. "That's a really high bar for everyone next year."

I giggle at the thought. With these scores, the next game's tributes face an uphill battle even more grueling than it needs to be. Of all the things that could have happened, Peeta scoring a ten in training is something nobody in the district could have anticipated. It's going to help him so much in sponsorship, he might even win this game, if he can prove he earned it. The topic of sponsorship reminds me that I still haven't brought Mr. Mellark his share of the money, and with the interviews now underway, I have no choice but to wait until tomorrow to deliver on that.

I find myself in my own game to figure out what each tribute and their mentors and stylists were going for this final presentation. Right out of the gate, comes, perhaps, the easiest guess of all. With the possible exception of the traces of golden light reflecting off her dress, Glimmer's act is not too hard to see through. For that matter, to my endless dismay, neither is her dress, if the amount of her body it supposedly covers is sufficient to qualify it as such.

I'll never understand sex appeal. I think it's got something to do with living in district 12, but Glimmer's presentation just doesn't make any strategic sense. The next guy's approach makes almost as much sense as hers. I start to suspect that maybe their training scores will reflect in the quality of their interviews. Certainly, Clove presents herself as a great deal more than a piece of meat to be inspected. Moreover, she even comes across as a reasonable person dealing with circumstances far beyond what she was used to.

Clove seems to dance around one topic for the three minutes she has; she seems terrified of talking about one specific thing that even Caesar doesn't press her on. I haven't the slightest idea what there is in district 2 that can paralyze someone like that. And for all her unbounded rationality, she has no idea that I, for all people, am watching.

Cato, the predicted killing machine of this game, is equally on edge about what is likely the exact same thing. One aspect of district 2 seems to invade the lives of every last person who lives there, and not a soul in the rest of Panem knows anything about it. The interviews drop off after this, the mystery of district 2, until Peeta's happens. Where he declares that everything he's done for the last five years of his life leading up to this point has had a single driving focus.

A childhood crush.

He resolves that he'll get back, but something in his face refuses to compromise his humanity just for a return home. He'll come back whole or not at all, Peeta says.

The camera zooms out as he leaves the seat and the whole of Panem in shock, and when it refocuses, it blurs out everyone except Saige, who looks towards Peeta with her eyes glowing almost like the television screen we see her on, processing a stream of information from a source of dark intent.

* * *

AN: No, I swear, I can't keep making these chapters longer, and eventually they'll shrink back to something I can manage. Also, it may be time to begin speculation on who will win this game. Feel free to guess who that will be, and even try to influence it, because, as of yet, I only have a vague clue how I want it to go.


	4. Peeta

All rights to Suzanne Collins, author of the The Hunger Games trilogy.

* * *

_White is the color of purity. It is the color of fresh fallen snow, untouched and untainted by people's footsteps or their frolicking. The first snowfall of the winter, as grim a reminder as it is in district 12 about the hardship soon to come, brings joy to a world that badly needs it, rather than the despair it's so saturated with already. The white snow that the president of Panem associates himself with is symbolic of the optimism it takes to survive the biting cold._

_It is not the color of the trail Peeta follows. His path is stained with a tribute's blood, from the gorge all the way up the cliff and onto the ice shelf where the machine controller for the battering ram lies, a trail of blood marks another tribute's struggle to escape the white desolation of this part of the arena._

_Peeta has no time to waste, with the shadow following him through the gorge, tracking him, hunting him. Trying even now to break through the wall to catch him. He takes the pickaxe head in his hand with weaker grip. By now, both his hands are so chilly that they're both of the verge of dying, but he still climbs, against all the pain, to get up the cliff. The blood trail thickens in some spots on the frozen rock face, coagulating on the jagged outcroppings that could tear into a tribute's skin too easily._

_Peeta's own hands and legs started scraping and catching against the cliff face, and his blood started to join the other tribute's in their escape from their owners' ascent. The howling wind on this side of the wall choked out any hint of sound from anywhere else in the arena. Only the cameras above can pick the sudden sound of a cannon shot signalling another tribute's death._

_His hand slips from the pickaxe head as he nears the top of the ice shelf, but fear of certain death should he fall motivates Peeta to catch onto another rock jutting out for support, and he opens his mouth as he grabs the sharp stone extrusion. He lets out a scream he can't hear, which nobody can hear over the deafening, freezing wind, of a pain he shouldn't even feel._

_In that wintry doom, nobody should live long enough active enough to be able to feel pain, but this year every tribute has unnatural tenacity. So much, that they still feel the pain of being in control of their senses. Once he finally scales the shelf and escapes his pursuers, Peeta looks towards the machine, where the trail of blood leads his gaze, and there, he truly loses his control._

_The blood trail finds its way to the lifeless body of the girl from district 5._

* * *

Morbid as it may seem on the last night before the Hunger Games begin, it's time for dinner, a thought that slipped my mind in my rush to get things done today. That, and now that Peeta has confessed his love for Katniss on national television, I'm further reminded that I still owe Mr. Mellark some money. Especially since he's going to need it as soon as the games begin tomorrow.

The sun is making its last stand in the sky, and Katniss walks to the door and beckons for me and mom to help her carry something in. "Gale and I couldn't figure out how to split it," she explains with a smirk on her face. The "it" in question is a deer. A whole deer, dead from a single shot through its brain. It's the kind of clean kill only Katniss could pull off; she adds, "There's a lot of parts. Deer's really big. So we decided the best way to split a deer was not. We came across another one. Not much else aside from that."

We carry in the deer, and Buttercup runs up and headbutts its stomach with as much strength as his little body can muster. It's kind of funny- Katniss is kind of laughing at him for a much different reason than I would be- but she shoos him off the deer, "No, you stupid cat, that's not for you!" To her total bewilderment, Buttercup backs off, and to mine, he purrs at her. "Prim, have you fed him anything today? He's behaving weirder than normal."

"He found a rat," I tell her, grinning with pride as I get defensive about Buttercup. "All by himself." Which is true- Buttercup did find the rat on his own. "He even killed it. See?" I point to Buttercup, who rolls over understanding that he's being praised. "He's a contributing member of the family. Mom, back me up this."

"Everything counts, dear," she jokes to Katniss, marking the first time mom has been able to find some levity in the challenges that the mine explosion left for us. I know it will be broken in an instant whenever the next tragedy strikes, but for right now, mom has recaptured all the energy from her youth. That counts more than anything.

Our playful argument carries the deer all the way to the table, when Katniss finds a suitable knife to use to hack the meat apart. She seems to know where to cut it, but watching her with the knife makes it looks like she doesn't quite know why. I can't figure it out myself; she must have watched the butcher cut it up when she brings it to him and remembered where he cut it. She'll get better at it, though. It takes practice, just like hunting, and Katniss mastered the woods over five years. Its creatures can't take much longer to learn.

As Katniss prepares the venison meat for the fire pit, meticulously splattering trace amounts of its flesh all over the floor, I go out to get water in the heating bucket, thinking we're going to make another stew. The pump and well are much more cooperative today, so much that I can't close the pump fast enough to prevent several pints of water from going straight back into the ground. I carry the bucket back very slowly, and I even stop dead in my tracks, wondering where Lady could have gone at sunset since her shack is empty.

"Lady is out of her shack," I announce the moment I get inside with the water. I had settled on this being a normal thing; she sometimes wanders off to graze wherever she can find grass. "She's probably coming back from the Meadow. Grazing," I say. Mom breathes a sigh of relief and invites me to join in cutting the greens and roots. I nod and carefully set the bucket to boil over the fire pit before going to search for another kitchen knife.

Once everything's prepared and cooking, mom takes out a needle and begins sewing while Katniss and I play with Buttercup. He's still a lazy cat, and Katniss wastes no time pointing this out to me, but one thing that bothers her is, "Why hasn't he been hissing at me?" Buttercup notices and bares his teeth when Katniss looks his way. She's not the least bit intimidated, and rolls her eyes, asking, "I don't have to feed him tonight, do I? If he's working for his keep, now."

"Well, he ate today," I begin, conceding that it is an incredible feat that he did. "I don't know how long he can keep it up without you." Satisfied, Katniss glares at Buttercup, as if to remind him that this one incident changes nothing. That this little incident is just a hiccup in an otherwise borderline vitriolic relationship. I don't think Katniss realizes that I've also tried to remind her that tough times are ahead, and that she has to come up with a way to pull through the distant winter that's approaching fast. I think she knows about that, but without a plan, prefers not to think about it, because hope, back before she met Gale, was all she had left.

Not wanting to throw hope to despair, we play with Buttercup, and we laugh about him for different reasons until the darkness outside has settled and we gather around the light and warmth of the fire pit. Dinner is ready, and by fire light, mom navigates to the iron lamp we were provided as one of the very few Capitol mercies. If they were going to give us oil, after all, they had to at least pretend it could be useful.

We eat the venison stew, chewing the chunks of through-cooked deer meat alongside the boiled roots and leaves. There is no dust-like bread today; the whole deer would be enough to last until tomorrow morning and we would make the tough, grainy bread then. It's the taste of nature, the purest product of the woods outside district 12. I'm on the verge of asking Katniss for one more chance to join her and Gale in the woods- one more chance to be able to experience the whole process myself.

That can wait. Instead, I tell mom, "Lady's fur is getting thick. It may be time to shear." We all get involved talking about goat fur, and agree that there's no better time than tomorrow. I could take Lady to the goat man, but then there would be the problem of how to pay him for it. Not a problem to me, but I'd have to figure out how to avoid both making it look like I'm begging and making it look like money is no issue. "I've been working a bit at the bakery," I offer. "I could pay the goat man that way."

Mom and Katniss can see my determination. I tell them that everything counts, and if this is the only way to do it, then I have to pay. That is, I refrain from mentioning, I have to be let pay. Close enough.

* * *

The lamp is extinguished. The fire pit crackles and flickers with just a few dying embers. Under the shroud of midnight, I wake up and walk with as light a step as I can manage to the dresser and slide one bag out. It rattles, reminding me that metal money is ridiculous, and paper money would be much better. There's little I can do about it now. I have to get this all the way out of the house without waking anyone, even Buttercup.

I drag the bag gently across the ground towards the door. Near the deer carcass, I pick up some of the spare bones in wonder of whether I should take them with me. I look to the side and see patches of deer skin laid out and stretched on improvised pins, and I put the bones back down. Katniss will want those for something. There's plenty to be made out of bones.

Closer to the door, mom left a pile of worn clothes that she'll wash in a few days. Some of it is covered with gathering coal dust in addition to the usual signs of use. I hear the impact of coal on dirt outside, and, figuring that to be the reason the dust is gathering in our otherwise carefully kept house, I think no more of it. I search through the pile of clothes, and near the bottom I find Katniss's old reaping outfit- the same one I wore- with the pins still inside. The pins don't need to be cleaned, so I take them out and take them with me on my way to the bakery along with the money, having no better place to put them.

In the dark, I have to take the direct route to the bakery, the one I know by heart after walking it so many times as part of the route to school. I pay no mind to door, quietly groaning as I close it behind me, and head out on my way with the sound of irregular footsteps from ever direction. Thre's a lot of activity in the night, most of it logistical, and probably most of it moving coal around from one place to another. The Peacekeepers don't take particular care over the district's industry, and there's coal on the ground, fallen out from bundles or- very rarely- carts.

There are some echoes of animal sounds from the woods, way off in the distance where I know that can't reach me. We're supposed to be safe from animals because of an electric fence. That fence probably never gets any power, and with the conditions everywhere else in the district, I feel like it's a miracle anything here gets any power. What really keeps us safe from animals is that they know better than to come in past the fence. The unpowered fence marks the line where their home ends and an alien world begins.

The howls and hoots, which Katniss once told me came from wolves and owls, are ironically more soothing sounds than the pitter-patter of coal and footsteps everywhere. The footsteps, that should be random, while they are faint, sound measured and deliberate. They all come from behind; someone's following me, but for right now, it's useless to turn around. I can't figure out whether to walk faster, keep pace or stop. Whether or not to let my pursuer know that I know he's there.

The moment I pass by a house that still has candle light burning from within, it illuminates some of my features and my choice is made for me. The man following me calls out in some form of mock surprise that hides genuine shock, "Primrose Everdeen?!" Hearing my name makes me freeze up and keep a tighter grip on the pins in my hand. "I don't believe it, I mean, someone bet it was you, but I thought to myself, 'Prim couldn't do that, could she?' I don't believe it!"

A thousand thoughts race through my mind. Someone found out I'm Foxglove. Someone knew it all along. Someone's going to talk about it. Someone will get the Peacekeepers involved. Someone will tip Katniss off. Every single person in the Hob would become a loose end the instant news of this got back, and I drop the sack to the ground, realizing that I have to do something now. "What exactly did you think I couldn't do?" I ask him, all of stalling for time, distracting him and fishing for what he knows.

"Any of it! If someone told me in any other situation than this, I would have said there's no way Prim would think to make drugs, that there's no way she would kill two people by overdosing them. But I was wrong!" he laughs. "Four days is all it takes, isn't it, Foxglove?"

I bend down and grab a piece of coal, and turn around to ask him, "So, what makes you think that I'm Primrose Everdeen?" I gaze at him through his cloak of shadows, and even that can't conceal his sudden fearful trembling. If he came to hear me beg, he's made a grave mistake. "Get over here!" I challenge him. "Get over here and take a good, hard look at me and tell me whether or not I'm the hunter's sister."

He walks over, towards me and the light, taking my words at face value without a care in the world for the pins or the piece of coal in my grasp. He sniffs hard, and reels back from the dust the plagues the district 12 air, but still lays a hand on my shoulder. His hands are grimy with something I don't want to know about, and which stains the fabric of my dress sleeve a sickening green and brown color. I hate to be able to guess it's his vomit from drinking too much, but if he's from the Hob, as he must be, it's the most likely explanation. He mutters something I can't hear, I can only interpret from his gleeful tone that he really thinks he knows who I am. But he already knows who I am, and he should know better than to try this.

He reaches out with his other arm and I jab him in the leg with all the pins. He falls over me, indicating that his legs are weak already, and his collision with the ground pushes the pins in further, and elicits a slight yelp. I guess it's a good thing for both of us he's resistant to pain right now, because as long as he doesn't feel pain, he'll keep quiet. "What the hell's your problem?!" he shouts, turning over enough to let me bend down and press the coal against his neck. Several parts of the human body are extremely sensitive, and knowing them well enough to avoid them helps me identify just where to choke him best. He starts breathing heavily, making up for lost air with his neck smeared black, and one by one, I pull out the pins from his leg, causing patches of red to soak his clothes and draw the air out of him again. He clumsily flails his arms around as he sucks air in, and, bent down over him, I drop the coal into his mouth and hold it shut.

Choking, shaking with fear of imminent death, his widened eyes stare into mine. "I want this to be a reminder," I say, "to you, and everyone else in the Hob, that my name is Foxglove." I release my hold on his mouth and glance over at my bag. There are some blood stains on my dress, not to mention the vomit he got on my sleeve, that I have to get rid of before going home. I tell him, "Go. Get out of here. I have something else to take care of."

When he stranger disappears into the darkness, I make the rest of the journey to the bakery. A light is still on inside, and the bulky silhouette of Mr. Mellark imposed against the wall brings me relief to know I'm not too late yet. I assume that he's the only one awake; I approach the door and he lets me inside, making sure nobody is watching.

Nobody is watching, not after midnight, not on the eve of the Hunger Games. "Your half," I put the money sack in front of him. "Sorry it's so late." I stare down at the tainted fabric as he looks for a place to hide the money. He doesn't need to stash it for very long.

"Need to wash up?" he inquires, offering to clean my dress right here, right now. He explains how he hasn't slept since Peeta's name was drawn, how he was the only one to keep such a vigil, and how his family consequently won't suspect anything if he brings some water in.

I take his offer, and as soon as he brings the water and some detergent, I take off my dress and let it soak in the bucket. There's a degree of shame I should be feeling, and Mr. Mellark eyes me as if to remind me of it, but I absolutely need to return home cleaned up from my encounter with the Hob stranger. Besides, he's mature enough that my bare chest doesn't mean a thing to him.

Mr. Mellark has a way of removing stains I've never seen mom use, and I'll remember to tell these to her, because his vigorous scrubbing with the detergent makes the blood stains fade to a light pink hue, and leaves no trace of the vomit. It'll do since it's going into the pile tomorrow, and I really just need to get it home.

We take it out to dry, and Mr. Mellark suggests that we heat it in the oven they cook with. I'm skeptical at first, but the rack he uses to hold my dress suspends out of reach of the flames licking up every so often. Since there's no comparable source of heat, I go with it, and we talk about money matters as we wait.

"Is that going to be enough?" I ask him about the sponsorship funds, honestly hoping that the answer is no. It's certainly not going to be enough to keep us alive forever.

He sighs, making me question whether any amount of money would help him keep Peeta alive. Either he could win the Hunger Games or he couldn't. There's not much of an edge anyone else can give him. When Mr. Mellark answers, "Perhaps another batch would help," he probably knows that I'm in this as much for myself as I am for Peeta. I don't blame him. I can't.

"One more batch," I repeat. "The games start tomorrow," later today, really, "so that batch will have to wait a few days." I try to think of a time when viewership won't be enforced. That would be whenever there's a lull in the action. "The first death after the bloodbath. That's our opportunity," I say. "I just need an hour or so after that."

He nods with a hollow smile, "It can be done. Will I be cleaning up again?"

"Unless I have spare time, yes, you'll probably be cleaning up."

As I'm about to apologize, he hastily says, "No, take your time." He waves his hand toward the bucket and oven. "Cleaning up is fine by me. Do whatever it takes to. . . do what you do best. I'll help any way I can. Every little bit counts." He walks over to the oven to check on my dress. It's dry, and he hands it to me to put on for the walk home. "Stay safe," he leaves his parting words.

* * *

There's heavy Peacekeeper activity outside. It's the busiest they ever get all year, the start of the Hunger Games, and the terrible bloodbath that often claims both district 12 tributes. It's the one thing the Capitol really wants to make sure everyone in the country sees and celebrates, no matter who loses. And honestly, forced to watch like this, whoever dies, everybody loses.

Caesar Flickerman and the long time announcer, Claudius Templesmith, prepare for the countdown to the other countdown, and the tributes all rise up into the arena in a ring surrounding a large, golden horn structure. The cornucopia, meaning horn of plenty, is arrayed with every kind of object in the Gamemakers' imagination, featuring weapons which defy all identification. There's piles of packs of dried food- meats and crackers, mostly- with bottles, jugs, canteens, and all other types of containers, with water or without. Bags of wildly varying sizes hide supplies that only some twisted mind in a white, sterile room somewhere could have given a purpose. What would be a rarity anywhere else is commonplace in the cornucopia.

It's the first time anybody sees this year's arena, and the whitewashed overhead view through which only the cornucopia is visible means that the arena's designed to be cold. A snowstorm obstructs top view, and the perspectives from around the launch circle show the tributes dressed in thick layered outfits, but still shivering anyway. The cameras pan around, sweeping around the circle giving focus to each tribute in proportion to their perceived odds. As such, a lot of cameras are tracking Cato and Clove, perhaps in an effort to show how the strong overcome nature.

One shot lingers on Peeta, who has practically transformed into a statue in an effort to stay still enough not to fall from the platform. I whisper my hopes that he stays alive as long as possible, as Mr. Mellark will have no reason to hide my morphine cooks if Peeta dies. Katniss notices my sentiments, but thankfully misses my intent, and she holds me in her arms, quivering when she tries to tell me it's all going to be okay- that whatever happens in the games doesn't affect us. She relaxes her arms when I start stirring in memory of the stranger's dirty, sickening touch on the shoulder. Katniss and mom know I woke up near midnight, but not that I left the house.

Twenty-four, the voice of Claudius Templesmith booms through the speakers. Under these conditions, the bloodbath is looking to be a brutal, slow crawl through the snow, with each tribute trying to just get to the supplies before the others. Freezing to death looks like the biggest threat for a second time in the games.

Eighteen, he calls out, drawing out the agonizing cold out for the longest minute in their lives. The storm above lets up, and the flush of sunlight, at first a bright flash across the sky, blinds the tributes who just a moment ago stood in the winter shadow. The clouds part, and the glare of the cornucopia and the snow field whites out all the supplies. It must take all their willpower not to reel back, fall over, off their platforms and be blown to pieces.

Ten, the countdown hauntingly marches on. The fragments of the district 1 and 2 alliance, the career pack that forms out of tradition, brace themselves for the gong. Glimmer's interview dress turns out to have been her only real opportunity to fully utilize her appearance. Her district partner, whose name I found out is Marvel, cycles breaths that condense and coalesce almost into mist in the snow. A shot is spared for Cato and Clove, for what may be their last look at each other.

Five: the scene cuts to shadows and the sound of ice floes.

Four: a light breaks out from above, as the tributes come back into view.

Three: it hits me that the camera rising from deep within the snow reveals its depth.

Two: under the surface, the snow caves in like liquid, deep enough to swallow and drown a tribute without any hope for escape from its icy clutch.

One: tension cuts from the tributes through the very screens to get to me, mom and Katniss. At last, Templesmith announces, "Let the Seventy-Fourth Hunger Games begin!" And just like that, the tributes start pushing through the snow, whether to fight or to escape, it made no difference. The wind calms to let the cries of crows permeate the air, which casts a grave new perspective on the birds' eye view we receive. Crows waiting for the bloodbath, or what they would consider a feast, gather around the circle in the trees of the skyline.

Moments in, a tribute falls into the snow. The first one off the platforms, she serves as a warning to the others. Peeta turns to escape the circle, and he pushes his way up a hill, plowing through the snow that's still a clean white. Saige, from the other side of the circle, tries to fight her way to join him, picking up a pack of supplies that, nearly frozen, looks to serve her only as a blunt weapon. She puts it to use blocking Clove's knife, and ducks down beneath the cover of snow, fumbling around searching for where it dropped.

Clove, who had picked only the one blade off the ground, advances towards the center in search of more, and reaches the vast array of weapons first, but before she can reach down for anything, someone tackles her from behind, crashing into the snow. There's dozens of other things going on in the scope of the view above, and their disappearance goes unnoticed by everyone, even those who have also reached the cornucopia. Even those who stand at the very same spot.

I glance over at Katniss, who cringes at the sight of something that accompanies the twang of a fast vibrating string. The sound is unmistakable; there's a bow and arrows in that pile, and I look back to see the gleaming silver weapon in Glimmer's hands. It's perfect for its setting, with white on white being practically invisible. The career pack closes in on the cornucopia; Glimmer and Marvel shooting from the inside and Cato circling the outside for the tributes who try to escape.

The circle around the cornucopia is left with a gruesome pile of eleven bodies and two disappearances, and I subconsciously try to figure out how I would heal all the wounds there are, or, in the truly grim cases, whether it was possible. Many bloodbath deaths are quick, and the top view hides some of the injuries, but the puncture wounds from arrows and spear are obvious, and would be treatable with just the basics if not for the everyone-trying-to-kill-everyone-else part. Cato left some bent or broken limbs in his wake, things that look, even from a distance, entirely fatal.

Saige has a spear in her right calf that reduces her to a crawl. Her frozen pack only weighs her down more, but she leaves the grisly scene, leaving only a red trail behind. The career pack goes the other way, up the hill to where Peeta is. They find him near a river, about to ford its freezing current when Glimmer asks him, "One last chance, twelve." She aims a shot straight into his heart, and when he turns around to see it, continues, "Are you in?" The sound of ten cannon shots- the end of the bloodbath- punctuates her ultimatum.

Peacekeeper activity essentially drops off after that. After the horrors of the first fight, there's not much reason to keep forcing people to watch if nothing's going to happen. So with nothing to see and everything else to do, I'm surprised Gale shows up, covered in dirt like he'd just been in the woods.

Katniss's eyes jump between him and me and mom. "Gale, I was just going to head out. Did you already set everything?" She gets up, ready to go, ready for her regular hunting trip. She looks at Gale like his face has a puzzle to be solved.

He responds, "Yeah, I was out all day checking up on all the traps. They're all set, Catnip, if you want to go out now, I'll just catch up later." He chooses his words carefully and slowly. It's almost like he's treating Katniss the same way he treats game. He doesn't call any attention to the bundle of poppy plants he has for me, nor the odd flowers he brought with them.

Katniss heads out, and mom goes to get water for whenever Katniss returns, giving me a quick kiss on the forehead on her way out. When I smile, Gale does too; it makes him happy to see our family is still so functional.

I furrow my eyebrows- the cheery air disperses- and ask him, "What are the flowers for?"

"You wanted an organic mix, right? There's some flowers I've never seen before, I think you can find some use for them." He hands those to me one at a time, handling them with care, as he drops off the bundle of poppies. "That one," he says about the last flower, with deep blue petals each shaped like a vicious fan of knives, "is a heat source. Probably a Capitol creation."

* * *

AN: Between the writing of this and the previous chapter, I read Joseph Conrad's _Heart of Darkness_. It's a pretty morbid exploration about imperialism on the Belgian Congo. It also partly inspires the more morbid parts of this chapter. By now, I can't promise much. I don't want to make anything much darker than the one scene in this chapter, but I probably will.

The theme for the chapter titles is supposed to be characters' names. Ideally, the eponymous character should be a big part of the chapter. It might not always work out this way.

Status of the Seventy-Fourth Hunger Games: 10 deaths; Saige bleeding and crippled; Peeta cornered by careers; Clove disappeared


	5. Rue

All rights to Suzanne Collins, actual author of the The Hunger Games trilogy.

* * *

_The district 5 girl, whose name eludes most of Panem, and her fiery red hair used to be the flame of hope in the cold, lies dead before Peeta's eyes. Her skin is eerily pale, completely sapped of its color and vigor from hiding from someone beneath the ice. Peeta looks at her body, sprawled out on the ground with one hand clutching the frame of the machine and the other reaching for the controls to the battering ram._

_Past her corpse, the trail of blood continues. Her body does not interact with the trail in any way; she just rests over it, perhaps for a trace of heat. The redhead girl didn't find enough warmth, of course, but Peeta bends down and feels the trail, and he understands that what she was searching for is there. This blood is reasonably warm. Warmer than his. And much warmer than _hers_, that's for sure._

_Peeta keeps walking along the trail, practically using it as a rail for his outstretched fingers to absorb its heat and regain some color in his skin, before the environment turns it a deathly blue. He has lost his pursuers, or else he is able to convince himself of it, since he does not use the mechanism to send them the battering ram and splatter them throughout the gorge. Even in the Hunger Games, Peeta likes to think he has some standards. He had said it himself one night with Saige before it all began, "They don't own me. I'm more than just a piece in their games."_

_He had to prove it. He had to be better than all of this, but he wasn't. He knew what he was getting into when he took that district 1 girl's offer. Whatever motive he had then is still driving him now, driving him down a trail of blood to seek its source._

_Way out on the horizon, there's a ruined pile of rubble that used to be a factory of some sort. Only its smoldering remains are left; perhaps that's where the path leads as well. Peeta's mind silences itself for the journey towards the foundry and the fire that must burn somewhere within it. He stares at the towering columns of smoke- the most inviting such a sight can ever be- and fixedly walks towards it like a moth._

_Only a few steps forward, Peeta falls and tumbles down a slippery slope of smooth ice. He tries to hold a position that lets him roll downhill, but inevitably settles into a rapid slide into a surface he can't see. When he lands, head first, he feels the soft chill of crushing snow around him. By a miracle, he's been spared, but he is far from saved. There's no telling what can save him now._

_The trail is gone, replaced by footprints into a snow field with high rising, dead trees that have thick root structures going into the surface. At any rate, going into the fake surface, Peeta finds out when he steps and sinks in, covered up to his elbows in the snow._

_He pushes through the snow field, far away from his would-be captors, when he hears the sound of whimpering. The whimpering of a girl cornered and about to die._

_A girl whimpering through the voice of a jabberjay._

* * *

Over the sound of Lady's milk sloshing around in the tin bucket, I try to figure out when would be a good time to get the money out of the bag. I know I have to use it eventually, but I also can't let Katniss find out I have it, or else she'll ask where it came from, and there's just no getting out of that mess. I lay the bucket down near mom, who looks at it, to check for any hair that may have been fallen into it. "Mom," I whine, "Lady doesn't shed fur like that!" I struggle not to giggle at my own joke, but mom keeps a stern look and, shushing me, picks something out of the milk.

She holds up a long strand of hair. "If that's true, Primrose," she says, "then where did this come from?" I examine the hair carefully, and I flush with embarrassment upon seeing that it's mine. I hug her and she pats my head, and then she suddenly stops and pushes me away, keeping her hand on the side of my head. "Not over the milk, dear," she teasingly chides, "we don't want to drink another hair."

A look at the few milk jars remaining convinces us to make cheese instead. Since we don't have a dedicated churn, we have to use the other bucket to pressurize the milk into cheese. And in order not to make a mess, we have to bottle some of the milk off the top. When that's out of the way, we heat the copper bottom of the other bucket and squeeze the milk between the two. Heat and pressure are two things deeply associated with coal, and would supposedly turn it to diamonds, if the two had the same chemical compositions. What heat and pressure can do, however, is help turn milk into cheese.

It's an extremely makeshift technique, but mom and I keep pressing the hot plate of the one bucket into the milk in the other, until it's too tough to press any further. That's right around when the cheese takes form, and it cools ad solidifies quickly enough that there's no big wait to find a clean utensil to scoop it out, and a clean surface to put it on.

As mom breaks the slab of cheese apart into sizable chunks, I take the tin bucket out to the pump to wash it out. I make sure to thank Lady for the milk we needed, and I rub her thick hair one last time before I have to take her to the goat man to get it sheared off. Then, I go back inside, leaving the tin bucket behind to go find out what those plants Gale brought back are useful for, and I pluck some coins from the sack into my pocket on the way. I think again about those plants. Even if the Capitol made them, there's got to be some function to them.

One of them is an extremely resilient flower that spits fire when I squeeze it. I make sure to remember this one, because that last thing I want is for the house to burn down thanks to me and Gale. Still, it's a fascinating plant, and it makes me wonder what the Capitol was thinking it'd be used for, and whether I had anything remotely close in mind. Probably not, since utility usually isn't the first thing to pop into their minds.

When Katniss comes back, Gale is with her, holding onto her shoulders and helping her walk as she holds her right arm up against her torso. Mom and I immediately recognize that her arm is very likely broken, from the worrying blotch of red seeping through her jacket. We clear the table, let everything on it just drop to the floor so we have a place to lay Katniss down on to work on fixing her arm. Gale guides her to the table as we grab the medical supplies. There could not have been a better time to restock.

"How bad is it?" mom asks them, expecting to need something to make into a cast. As she goes to find something straight and stiff, it occurs to us that there's never been any good materials in the district for rods that could support casts. Certainly there are no titanium rods which would be ideal for Katniss's severe injury, all of those are reserved for the Capitol, and maybe the inner districts on a good day.

Without every last bit of the supplies we need- and even if we had them- there's no room for Katniss's lies as far as her health is concerned: "It's just a sprain, I'm going to be fine."

"There's no way that's a sprain, Katniss." I hover my hands less than an inch off her arm, and I ask her, "Can you move it yourself? Lay it flatly on the table?" I'm answered by a stifled screech of pain, and I confirm for mom, "It's broken," before soliciting Gale's help in laying out Katniss's arm to a workable position.

If I couldn't see the way her face contorts to give it away, Katniss's mask over her agony would be incredibly admirable. That, and if she wasn't actually in bad shape. Mom comes back to the table, with no cast structure, but she does bring the box of morphling I never thought I'd ever actually see. But there's every reason to use it now; if anything is an emergency, this is it.

As experienced as she is, mom shakes with discomfort around the narcotic, and I offer to use it for her. As I fill the syringe, I also have difficulties, having to remember that this is much less potent than the morphine proper that Colton accidentally killed himself with. I also can't really fathom the thought that this stuff is so addictive that just the one dose might get Katniss dependent. Maybe that's what mom's afraid of, too.

I'm driven to give Katniss the injection when I hear wood crack next to me. I look over to Gale, and see that he's snapped his bow in half. "Use this for the cast," he says, and mom only takes it and goes with it because Gale's already committed himself and his bow. One last thing to address.

"We need to bare her arm," which means removing her jacket and shirt. Now, this has nothing to do with shame. At least I hope not; Katniss is accustomed to sometimes being naked before us, and she ought to be familiar enough with Gale that she'll be okay with him around, too. The real problem is that the jacket just won't come off without us moving Katniss's arm too much.

It takes some resolve. A lot of resolve on Katniss's part because of what the jacket, dad's jacket, means to her, but after quelling a lot of protest on her part, we all come to a three against one decision that we have to cut the whole thing off. I take a small, precise cutting knife and place the blade underneath the seam connecting the shoulder to the sleeve, and rip it open, tearing the sleeve from the rest of the patchwork relic. Katniss tears up as I do it, while I have to save mine for after the operation is finished.

It's not too long until then: Katniss doesn't have nearly so many emotions bound to her shirt, and after we pull both of those off, mom applies a cloth and gauze cast about her right arm using Gale's shattered bow pieces as a skeleton. I can finally lay my head down on her chest and bawl my eyes out, fighting for space with Gale who's practically doing the same thing but without the tears. It's his manliness, and all that stuff that I don't have to display because I'm twelve.

Katniss takes a look at the cast, asks me and mom, "How long before it's healed?" How long will it be before she can go hunting again? Right now, it's impossible to say.

Mom very carefully tells her, "You'll be back in the woods as soon as you're ready, dear. I don't know how long it's going to be. I just know we'll hold out until then." She gives Gale a faint smile, and offer to leave him with Katniss for a bit while she talks to me about something, which Gale immediately seizes. We go towards the cupboard, with a door hanging ajar from when mom grabbed the morphling. The same cupboard, I realize, where I hid the liquor and catalyst.

"I was bringing that to the bakery," I try to explain to her. "Mr. Mellark needed it there. I didn't ask him why. I guess he didn't want to be seen buying it, so I had to go buy it."

"He thought that sending you to buy alcohol was a better idea than just not drinking?" I know mom's thinking about how Mr. Mellark can be an emotional man at times, and wondering to what extent that goes. I know he's emotional. That's how I got him involved in the first place. And amazingly enough, it's helping me out a second time, since mom is so focused on him that she's not parsing my story for any lies.

It also helps that I'm trying my best not to actually tell any.

Mom think it over just a little more, propping her head up on her knuckles. At last, she heaves a dismissive breath and says, "Okay, dear. Bring it to him whenever you can. Just don't do it again, okay? I don't want him to drink himself all the way here, or to drink himself to death. One famous drunkard's enough for the district," she ends muttering to herself.

Now I've got a problem on my hands. There's well near five thousand coins in a sack under the dresser, and I have to figure out how to spend it. Me- nobody else. I have a few on me, and I said I'd get Lady sheared soon, so that may as well be today. It has to, and I think if I can get the goat man to hold on to Lady for a bit, I can go back later to pick her up.

I go out to get Lady, humming to myself as I pass Katniss and Gale. I want them to think that this is what I was discussing with mom, and not her near discovery of what I was doing. I get to the shack and look at the tin bucket, wanting to give Lady one last bath in her thick fur before having it shaved off. I walk up and gently rub the back of her neck, and I whisper, "It's time." I take her out of the shack and towards the east entrance of the coal mines, where the goat man lives. I stroke Lady's fur the whole way there, savoring the last feel of her soft hair.

* * *

The goat man takes a look at Lady, and huffs that it's been a long time since he's seen her last. "Really, Prim, I don't think I've seen you or Lady for a whole year. That has got to be a lot of fur she's grown all this time. Mid-summer and the end of winter every year, Prim. That's when you have to take her here to be sheared."

"I thought it was spring and autumn," I confess, having gotten accustomed to bring Lady in then. Mostly because it was cheaper to do when he didn't have so many other goats in need of haircuts. "I promise, I'll get her on schedule after this."

"But you missed autumn of last year," he presses on. "What happened then?"

I argue, "It was really cold last year! I thought she'd need all that hair to keep warm."

"She does." He says it like he's won the point. He probably has, too. "Which is why you should bring her in half way through summer and at the end of winter. Now, I know that's going to be more expensive, and you for especially, I'm really sorry about that. I'll take a trade for this time, if that helps. A few bottles of milk for the fur; I think Lady's milk is the best. You take good care of her." I blush just as he adds under his breath, "Except for the shearing. Room for improvement."

His makes a generous offer, which really goes to show the district's sense of community. "Sounds good," I thank him. We've been strapped for money for almost my entire life, and even though I'm sitting on more than I've ever seen- more than the goat man has ever seen too- this nest egg must simultaneously be my biggest resource and my biggest secret. "Does six bottles sound fair?" I ask for a price.

The goat man thinks about it, tapping his fingers on his chin, and he tells me, "Make it four. Six might be hard to carry. Plus, it'd be worth the same." He pats Lady on what I guess is her back. "Nothing else quite like it, even in my herd."

I thank the goat man for both his job and his deal, and say goodbye to him and Lady. Then I head out to find the butcher's shop in town on the other side of the district. The sun, which was brightest just before Gale brought Katniss home, looks like it's trying to tell me something in how rapidly it sets. This byzantine omen propels me straight to Cassio Tully, one of the town's two competing butchers, and one of the only two people in the district who could possibly own competing businesses. He would be happy to receive mine.

The smell of meaty juices permeates the air around his shop, which he runs right next to his farm of boar and chickens. He's slaughtered something within the week, I think, knowing that Mr. Tully likes to give the animals a chance to fatten up as much as possible before it's their turn to fatten someone else up. Or, as is the case in district 12, keep people from thinning any more than they already are.

Sure enough, I walk into the butchery and see about a third of a boar left hanging from a meat hook, with its skeleton- minus the skull- exposed and extruding from its body. I remember when the deer Katniss brought back used to look like that, but seeing it again in a boar in the one place an animal would go to die for everyone else, the boar's hinds don't bother me nearly as much. It's still a powerful smell, though. I don't know if I'll ever get used to that.

Cassio sees me come in, sees me look at the boar, and without missing a beat, he starts trying to sell it to me. "You're Katniss's sister, right?" he asks just to confirm my connection with the girl who brings him the less well-stocked game. It's not like he doesn't already know me. "I heard she caught an entire deer a few days back. Why didn't she bring it to me?" Mr. Tully shrugs his shoulders and laughs a little more, "Ah, it doesn't matter, she knows what she's doing. What brings you here?"

"Katniss had an accident," I tell him. "She didn't bring anything back, so we dug up our savings. I had to get Lady sheared today, too, so I paid some of it to the goat man on the other side of town." My hands find their way up to my eyes, and cover them like I'm going to cry telling him this. My breathing intensifies too, and all so that maybe Mr. Tully will let me pay less. "These have been tough times, and I hate to think what will happen when winter comes." I lift my head out of my cupped hands to take brief looks at him until he responds.

I hear bone strike metal and the meat hook swing through the air, and when I look again, Cassio has taken a large knife and cuts entire rest of the hanging boar into pieces for a family of three. He packs them up while I lay every coin in my pocket down on the counter, and when he hands me the sack, he looks at my payment and pushes one coin back for every piece of meat he cut. We stare at each other, and I'm questioning his decision, but he just nods, "Tell your sister and mother I said hi, would you?"

"I'll make sure they hear it," I assure him. "Thanks, Mr. Tully." I take the sack of boar meat and the couple of coins he left for me to keep and make my way back across the district to get back to the goat man. The aura of the meat's scent attracts the occasional look I can do without. It's hard to tell what onlooking strangers think of this. I don't look like I should be carrying around a sack this size, but there could be any amount of ulterior circumstances, which in my case, there certainly are, that account for it.

Maybe one of them knows me, and would be extremely worried about Katniss to see me going about doing her job. Getting food. Keeping us alive.

The sunset feels slower the closer I get to the goat man. The moment of twilight as I pick up Lady and the fur, and promise to bring him the milk later doesn't want to turn to darkness until I have to leave and bring everything home. The orange glow of sunset lasts until I arrive home, after I bring Lady into her dilapidated shack and get a good feel of her almost bare skin. I leave the bag of her hair there for now. When I step foot inside, and put the bundle of boar meat down, Katniss looks up with a bunch of questions in mind.

Her first comes, "I thought you needed to pay the goat man?"

"We needed food," I say. "I asked the goat man if I could trade him some milk to shear Lady instead of pay straight up. He said yes; he even gave me until tomorrow to bring him the milk." He never gave me a time on the milk. I have just bound myself to bring it to him tomorrow.

"Okay," she nods, shifting her attention to the meat. "Hinds, right?" she asks me, to which I nod and smile that she is able to recognize it in the blink of an eye. Katniss praises me, "Good choice, that must have cost a lot less than the rest of the pig."

"There was no rest of the pig," I tell her, faintly blushing.

"There's the rest of its skeleton," she observes, dropping her arm to lift the meat bag open and take a look inside. I gasp to see that Mr. Tully actually left the pig's bones inside as a present. Katniss notes that, "That'll come in handy. Thanks, Prim, this really is amazing." She drops the sack and holds her left arm out for me to walk in and give her a hug. I'm careful not to squeeze too hard on her right arm.

To think it was only this morning she almost broke her arm, it's astounding just how much can be healed after all. It morbidly reminds me of the scene at the bloodbath, with all the bodies Cato left in their mangled states. I start wondering now just how many of them could have been saved. If, that is again, it weren't for there still being people around trying to kill them. Probably most of them; we saved Katniss, so it can be done.

I'm really glad she's back up on her feet already, dragging the sack of meat onto the table and inviting me to cook with her. I ask mom to get water this time, and she takes the bucket to the pump out back and gives Katniss and me some time alone. I help get the boar cuts onto the table, and Katniss tells me to get her hunting knife from near her equipment. Apparently, it's good enough for skinning. With just her left hand, she guides me through the process of skinning the boar, pressing onto the meat with me during the tough parts. Boar hide is tough enough that she's almost always holding my hand.

"You know, I took a look at those plants Gale brought back. Not the poppies, the other ones." She sighs, probably as confused as I was when I first examined them. The blue one is the most curious of the bunch by a long shot, and Katniss seems to think that too. "They're- they're really something," she takes a look down at the boar and interrupts herself with instructions on how to chop it evenly. As I hack away, she continues, "The blue, sharp flowers breathe fire. I had a fun time with that while you were out."

"It just. . . breathes fire?" I'm incredulous about the extent to which the Capitol will create things just for their own amusement.

"Yeah!" Katniss throws her hand up, but leaves her right arm still as she can. "It just breathes fire! They're the weirdest things. What did Gale bring them for?"

I picture it in my mind: the blue knife-fan flower spitting flames everywhere around it. "Gale must have thought they were special. Maybe he just figured we'd find a use for them." If there is one, though, I have no idea what it is now.

* * *

Perhaps the one thing that is the most awful thing to do while on order to watch the Hunger Games is eat dinner. Herb seasoned boar roasted over the fire pit, as desperate a measure as it is for us, is an insulting luxury in comparison to the absolute nothing that the tributes in the winter death arena have. The sole exception, shown on screen right now in a way that partially relieves my guilt, is the career alliance and the makeshift snow skiff they have their supplies packed on. The four of them- Clove is still missing, probably dead, or otherwise certainly dying- push through the snow and wind on a journey towards a great, black column of smoke in the distance.

Gently sloping downwards, their path melds into icy cold water solution made to remain liquid at extreme temperatures. The sunlight wanes as they near the water line, as the glacier structure's towering height obstructs the artificial lighting. Still, the cavern is lit inside as if by thousands upon thousands of parallel spotlights, and the mouth is colored in such a way as to make it indistinguishable from the sky, except for the sun. The effect is skewed on screen, which must be the result of a visual filter placed for the audience's convenience.

Only once they get to the water does Cato question where they are. "Can any of you see the sun?" The game time runs a phase off from real time, as a way to distance the events there from real life. It's a way to blind Capitol citizens to the truth that people are dying and that it's a dreadful thing. It seems some Capitol people are lightheaded enough to believe that whatever is happening under a different sun than the one they have takes place in a completely new world. But everything that can make the Capitol think one way has the opposite effect in the districts, and the depersonalization that goes on in the arena conditions themselves is sometimes a breaking point for people's opinion. But maybe it's not that, and it's just that the games aren't broadcast live. That lets the Capitol censor whatever they want while still providing enough footage to retain the real time aspect.

All this to say, even though we're eating dinner by oil lamp, the arena's still bathed in sunlight, wherever it reaches. "I have no idea," Marvel says, looking around to find the sky. "It's still daytime; where has the sun gone? Where's the smoke? I don't see that, either."

"Twelve, stop the skiff," Glimmer orders. He brings the supply stack to a halt with Cato's help. Glimmer takes a few steps forward, and the frigid water rises up to her waist before she's any more than her height away from the water line. The cold shakes her through to her voice and the subtle clattering of her teeth, "Too deep. We have to turn back. Find another way," she starts wading out of the water, not directly in the direction of dry-ish land, but at a slightly offset course that I, for one, can't explain.

She gets out of the water and runs headlong into a cavern wall. A sudden breeze knocks her over and both Cato and Marvel run over to help keep her steady. Her legs are covered in cold water, and the fabric of the tribute outfits evidently filters whatever anti-freeze solute kept it from becoming lethal. Or easy travel.

A figure appears near the top of the slope and throws something at the careers. It hits the skiff, which begins to slide down the slope, and Peeta is the only one left pulling on it to keep it from driving straight into the water, but he's not strong enough to keep it still on his own. "Guys!" he calls, "A little help here? Before everything sinks."

Cato reaches Glimmer first; Marvel turns back to save the skiff, but it gets fast enough that his added force sends a considerable amount of food flying into the water. With the unknown chemicals inside the water, that food is now contaminated and useless, and the loss cuts over a day of expedition time from their supplies. And in an arena like this, why they left the Cornucopia in the first place is beyond me. . . oh, right, the deep snow and Clove inexplicably sinking. Of course.

Cato helps Glimmer walk to the skiff, but she refuses to be carried in it. The three careers agree on pushing it out being the fastest way to get out of the cavern and back to searching for other tributes. "You're steering," Marvel tells Peeta. "Don't point it anywhere stupid; don't do anything you'll regret a moment later."

The dark figure has vanished, and so must have been very small. Could it have been Rue? I don't think it could really be anyone else, and it certainly wasn't a mutt. As the group advances out of the cavern mouth, a small silver parachute drops down and catches on something. Some invisible line of wire set on the slope that tells me the girl from district 11 as young as I am is responsible for this. Before I even have time to figure out the parachute, Peeta steps over it and drags the skiff right into the line. There's an audible snap and the careers pushing the vehicle snap to alarm.

Everything starts to slide back down the slope, and the careers jump out of the way as their supplies drag Peeta along on its ride straight into the water. It's so sudden, Katniss and I are both shocked at how vulnerable the dreaded alliance really is. And then, with Peeta drowning, I fear for my partnership with Mr. Mellark, how it'd all be a waste of his time for Peeta to die now while he was sitting on a pile of money.

Glimmer takes off her outer coat and throws her bow and quiver on the ground and dives in after him. Absolutely everyone, in the arena or not, is holding their breath. Air bubbles burst on the water's surface, and for nearly a minute, the sound of a cannon speaks the most ominous possible message for them. Then a blonde head floats up. Soon after, another one surfaces. Please be Glimmer, I think. Please let Peeta still be alive.

Glimmer moves first. She swims and wades back onto the ice, dragging Peeta's floating body. He's breathing. For now, the crisis is past. Glimmer and Peeta are both alive, and the alliance is on its way back to the Cornucopia. From above the cavern entrance, Rue gives a faint smirk before running off to chase the smoke columns, satisfied that the career threat is crippled. She leaves behind a silver sponsorship case.

The sun begins to set in the arena, and without its light, the temperature drops to a new low every night. In the darkness beneath gathering blizzard clouds, a sponsorship gift arrives for Peeta. A fire starter, which prompts the careers to cut some branches off a dead tree and camp right there by a fire. This must be the work of Mr. Mellark, and, consequently, my work. It will be the first of many, I can only assume, but he has to show some restraint. The fire starter is a good sign.

There's a thump on the door, which mom goes to answer, not finding anybody but a parcel for Katniss. There's no indication where it comes from, and therefore every indication that it comes from the Hob. Mom brings it in and opens it. It contains raw meat for tomorrow, as well as spare medical supplies, and essentially anything they could think of that would help her through this as fast as possible.

They can see as well as I can that Katniss not being in the woods is a bad thing for everybody. We all depend on her that much, that when the time comes for her to need us, we all jump into action. They're doing everything they can to help her, and I can't help but thank them for helping us all this way.

But I can't stand it, either.

* * *

AN: This was the chapter where I thought things would start getting shorter. They didn't. Also, I hope you don't have a problem with the inversion of morality you see here (Rue being evil and Glimmer being heroic); inverting moralities was the whole premise I began with.

If anyone would like to pick up this winter arena and basically write the Seventy-Fourth Game for this story, please PM me about it. As it is, I do not know exactly where I want it to go. It's still malleable.

Status of the Seventy-Fourth Hunger Games: 11 deaths; Peeta in career alliance; alliance without supplies and freezing; Rue has attacked the careers; Saige and Clove still unaccounted for


	6. Glimmer

All rights to Suzanne Collins, author of the The Hunger Games trilogy.

* * *

_The voice that the jabberjays crudely imitate belongs to one of the tributes. Peeta looks like he knows whose voice it is supposed to be, and the shock in his face says that it's a tribute he never thought could be put in such a position. Someone he never suspected could possibly be so vulnerable. But it's just like the Gamemakers to revel in this sort of twist. Peeta looks up at the jabberjays chattering in the trees, and he pushes through the snow that almost buries him already, to try to follow the line of spy birds._

_Not ten steps towards the first perched bird, he steps onto the base of something slippery. As he tips over, the snow instantly vaporizes to reveal an icicle sticking out of the ground somewhere below him. He twists his whole body to the side, just barely avoiding being impaled through the brain by the arena terrain in what would be the single most inept death in any Hunger Games ever. Nobody deserves a fate that ignominious. Except maybe that one girl. . ._

_As quickly as it evaporated, the snow coalesces again on top of him, falls down to suffocate him, or drown him, or freeze him to death. It looks like drown; the snow level falls as it melts from the bottom out, and the icicle is exposed as a dot of blue against a field of blank white. The icicle also starts melting, but the cold of the arena doesn't appear to have raised a single degree. Peeta was already on the verge of drowning once. Why would the Gamemakers try to make it happen a second time?_

_The jabberjays uncannily look towards the icicle pit, cooing as they try to prepare a dirge for him before the cannon gets to it first. A huge shadow covers the field, but the birds don't fly away. They stand stiff and silent, as if mesmerized by something they see in the smoke. That smoke, as it falls and bends its path down to the tributes' side of the sea, brings a darkness blacker than night with it. That smoke will engulf everyone in there, and Peeta might not even be around when it finally falls._

_A cannon sounds, which should mean Peeta's dead. But with what's happened in this game, a cannon now could mean anything. Besides, he's not dead, not yet. His hand shoots up out of the snow, grasping at the air as though he was expecting to find something. The rest of him floats up next, and his other hand bears a terrible wound, which must have come from the icicle when he grabbed it to pull himself up._

_Floating above the snow, head looking out for anyone coming his way, Peeta's attention is drawn to the collapsing smoke tower. He tries to backstep away from it, and then runs as fast as the snow will let him. It's futile to run from the smoke; he must know that, but still see something else worth running from._

_He runs towards the jabberjays, which all start screeching at once like a choir of the doomed a moment before they're dead. One voice stands out among the rest, notable for not being a tribute's voice, and notable for not much else, though it should be familiar in district 12. It's from the girl Peeta used to talk about, who lived in the Seam and whose history mirrors her father's. Who showed up five years ago at the bakery, and whom Peeta gave the burnt bread._

_Peeta calls out the name, "Katniss!" as he shoves into the snow field. "What did they do to you?!" he weakly shouts, on the breaking point of his cold tolerance. From behind him comes another ear splitting screech, and he turns around when all the jabberjays silence themselves again. Peeta turns and sees a blur in the smoke._

_The crow that has haunted the whole game comes back for Peeta alone._

* * *

Daybreak reminds be that I told Mr. Mellark I'd meet him after the first death in the games after the initial salvo of cannons. I thought we both knew that he didn't need me that much if he was sitting on spare money and waiting for an opportune moment to use it. But what do I know, after all? He goes ahead and starts the sponsorship right away. Which means I have to go talk to him, to tell him to take it slow and not draw any suspicion to himself. And, no, he better not draw any suspicion to me, either.

I sit down by Katniss's side and wait for her to wake up. I'll have to remember this feeling, because as soon as her arm heals, I'm never going to wake up earlier than she does again. I try not to think about everything I need to get done today, but it only angers me more to know that I've been doing the hard work of making and selling these drugs, and all Mr. Mellark had to do was make sure nobody saw me, yet he can spend his cut and I can't spend mine. It's bad to think about the way every bit he spends only seems like a good investment on the surface because it's easy to track repeated gifts from the same source.

Katniss wakes up startled to see me sitting upright and rests her left hand on my shoulder.

"How's the arm coming along?" I ask her.

She looks at her arm in its cast. "It's coming," she says. She shows nothing on her face for a while. She's thinking, and then she laughs. "Do you have any way to make it heal faster?"

"Mom and I would have thought of it much sooner," I laugh with her. We both know how long it's going to take her arm to fully recover. At least, I know, and Katniss has a vague idea that it will take a month or two before she can return to the woods and expect to actually hunt anything. And we both know that will leave a month long gap in any woods activity, from when Gale is taken to the mines to when Katniss's arms heal. Not knowing what she will think of it, I suggest, "Maybe Gale brought something that could help?"

"Good thinking, Prim," she smile at me. She tugs at my shoulder, and I lean down lowering myself into her embrace. She's very warm, likely from the cells in her right arm scrambling to replicate and rebuild the damaged bone and tissue. When she releases me, I offer to help her out of bed, but she assures me, "Even I would know it if I was that helpless," and gets on her feet herself.

I take the bundle of strange plants from its stash so we can look them over together. I almost immediately realize that this might not lead anywhere. Even now, the blue fire-breathing one is the one that stands out, and while we may need it soon, that's just soon, not now. Of all the other plants, in their own myriad of shapes and colors, there are a few other blue plants with smoother petals than the fire flowers, shaped vaguely like comfrey herbs used to treat inflammation and general wounds.

"This. . . looks like it has medical uses," I say, hesitating on the off chance that the Capitol biological engineers really love irony. "It's blue like the other interesting plant," I add.

"Shouldn't we test it first?" She looks over at Buttercup, who's still asleep, and a dark grin starts to form on her face. "I can think of a perfect first patient-"

"We are not going to drop Buttercup from a table just to see if these plants make decent medicine," I protest. "What if it kills him?" It could be either the drop or the herbs, and it really doesn't matter which one. All I'm worried about is the possibility of him dying to something.

"Well, if it does that, what else can we test it on?"

"We can just use one of the rats in the house. There's no shortage of them, is there?"

"Are we going to wait for Buttercup to catch one?" Katniss points back to her broken arm, "Because we both know I can't do it like this."

"How much of a difference are we even expecting this to make?" I wonder. Anything could happen, but odds are it won't fix up her arm right away- that's typically what the Capitol would employ surgery for, aside from appearances.

Katniss shakes her head, "I don't know, I just- I want it to heal as soon as possible."

"We all do. But I want it at least heal eventually, and we know for sure that it's on its way now. I think there's too much to worry about already for us to add more herbs to the list."

"Fine," she reluctantly concedes, "rushing into this is a bad idea." She clutches her arm, which by now is no longer so sensitive that just a touch is painful. "How long, though?"

"Until it's healed?"

"Until it's good enough to go outdoors again." To the woods, where her life really begins and ends.

"It won't be more than a few weeks, Katniss. You know that." But what she's hoping for is that it'd be before Gale goes to the coal mines. And it's something we both know, deep down, is infeasible without whatever wizardry they use in the Capitol. "Would you take me there?"

"What's that?" she asks.

"When it's ready," I motion to her arm. "Would you take me to the woods?"

"Prim, are you trying to take Gale's place?"

"Oh no," I object, "I could never do that! I just thought it'd be nice to be there with you."

She remembers back to the times we tried it before. I couldn't handle it then. The thought of killing animals was too much, even if it was our survival against theirs. "I don't want the woods to change you, Prim."

"They can only change me for the better." On a completely different note, since I still have to talk things over with Mr. Mellark: "Can we go to the bakery today?"

"Not right now; the sun's barely up. But yeah, definitely, some time today." We lean on each other, and I feel her head facing her fractured arm. I turn my eyes as close as they'll get in her direction, and I feel on my forehead the few tears she couldn't quash.***

I stand and gawk at Mr. Mellark in disbelief, and in full view of his wife, who insisted on being here with us. It's a needless complication to have her here, and part of my exasperation is that he just succumbs to anyone like this. But not me, of course. I had to convince him with every shred of reason and persuasion I had. "Are you sure this is smart?" I ask him. "The Capitol might wonder where all your money is coming from."

"That's what I've been trying to tell him," Mrs. Mellark tells me. She then turns to him, "And where did your money come from anyway? Why are you just throwing it at that wretch? You have no idea how much you could be doing for everyone in the district or your family with the kind of money you're tossing around."

Mr. Mellark has no answer for his wife, who still doesn't look my way to see the fear I have on my sleeve that she might just piece everything together right here. He just stares at her, too, doing his best to avert an implicating glance towards me. This, too, must be a result of his generosity. It leaves me thinking how long I could go without ratting him out if it came to it. He thinks of something, though, and I'm amazed at the way he takes the heat from his wife for what I've been doing.

"Primrose has been coming over for a while, bringing poppy plants," his story begins. "Her sister, Katniss, has an old botany book hand-made by their father, and right on the page for poppies, there are all sorts of culinary uses. Primrose must have thought that they would be useful to us, whether we use the oil or the seeds for cooking." I find myself nodding silently along, and Mrs. Mellark listens in, wondering if I've been enabling her husband to do something terrible. "What she probably doesn't know about poppies," he continues, to the point where I stop bobbing my head up and down beneath my own notice, "is that opiate poppy plants used to be used in the development of narcotic drugs."

"So you've been making drugs here, under our shared roof, and in the middle of our business, tricking a little girl into bringing your supplies?"

"Well, dear, that money didn't come from nowhere," he retorts.

"It's sure as hell going there, though! Argh! What was I thinking?" She takes a whiff of the house, and smells not coal dust, but leftover vapors and residue from my cooking session. She reels back from the smell, and orders him to shut down the bakery and clean it so thoroughly that every trace of his drug making is gone before either of the two boys left smells it. "Milo and Wheatley will not find out about this. Our customers cannot find out about this, either, do you understand?"

"Yes, I get it," he holds himself firmly away from me, which very effectively masks the real direction of his words. "Nobody else will learn about anything that happened here. I can promise you that much."

"You can do more than that," she presses on.

"You're absolutely right. By the time we open up again, even the two of us will have forgotten my part in the world of drugs." He then looks over towards the money with an expression I can't see, but which I imagine must be trying to hide some inner turmoil. "What do we do about that?"

"I don't know, how much is it?" But she already knows it has to be a lot if he was planning to sponsor Peeta with it.

"There's a few thousand dollars-"

"A few thousand! Well! There's no way to get rid of it now!" Mrs. Mellark throws up her hands in a sense of defeat and begins to pace about the room. It's a nice looking room, in decent condition, and there's a plethora of cooking equipment that looks, from a Seam perspective, unfathomably expensive. "I mean- can anyone in the whole district even picture what a thousand dollars looks like, let a lone a few thousand?"

"What about Peeta?" I chime in. When they both look at me like I'm a ghost in the room, I continue, "That money's not going to do you any good here, and I'm sure you both want him to come back alive."

Mrs. Mellark kneels down and places her hands on my shoulders. "Primrose, where that money came from practically determines where it's going." She glares at her husband, "He did terrible things for that money, and only terrible things can come of it. Drug money is no way to live." Her eyes shift back to me, and shut for a while until she lets go of me altogether.

"But is there really another way to get rid of it?" Mr. Mellark contends. "We can get him back and get the last remnant of my mistake out of the house. It's like you said: he'll never have to know how he got his sponsorship. It all gets put under that drunk, Haymitch."

The wife sighs, covers her face with her hands and bemoans her options. "Why don't we just. . . give it all to the Peacekeepers?" She catches what she just said a moment before either of us two do, and hastily affirms, "Give it to them, I mean, not turn it in. I'm sure they'd love to have it, and it's not like anybody would question where they got it from."

"Can I still bring the poppies though?" I ask. "I promise, I won't let him do anything bad with them."

"She'll be by my side at all times. I won't be able to hide anything from her."

Mrs. Mellark gives it some thought, and she grimly turns towards me and says, "I'm sorry, Primrose, but I can't let let that happen here."

"Well, can I at least help get rid of the money?"

There's a long silence as both the Mellark parents consider what I'm proposing, and it honestly does sound like I'm just trying to take it all for myself. Mr. Mellark reminds me, "Nothing good can come of it, Prim," but I have no intent to keep it.

"I'll get rid of it. Katniss was part of the Hob for a long time; I can drop it off there, nobody will think anything of it." Now's as good a time as any to start lying, I suppose. I'm about to start up again, but Mrs. Mellark cuts me off and tells me to just take the money and go wherever I'm going to go to make it vanish. As for the poppy plants, I'm never to bring those here again. I take the bag, give them my thanks for entrusting me with it, and leave for the Hob, thinking about everything Mrs. Mellark said.

How she thinks I'm the victim of her husband's madness. How drug money is no way to live. I get to the verge of driving myself insane, trying to figure out how she could so simultaneously be in the dark about my part of the morphine operation- or everything- and still be so able to accuse me on my decisions.

She never figured it out herself. I don't suspect Mr. Mellark will ever say another word of this to her. I'm in the clear, and he's under her intense scrutiny. But he's also broke, and I think I saw him shaking his head when his wife told me: no more. If he's still looking for a way to get Peeta home safe, I might still have one more way to redouble my illicit profits. I certainly know I need as much as I can get.

The whole conversation lingers in my head on my way to the Hob. Should I really be doing this? Is making and selling morphine really a decent way to live? I try to think of a way to justify it; I recall that I've, so far, only sold one batch, and that to someone who was already addicted to a lesser product, and who really deserved some comeuppance for his irreverence during the reaping. But does it matter who I sell it to if it kills them? Is there anyone who deserves to die in our place?

My return to the Hob tells me "yes." But not right this moment.

I see that the alcohol stand is under new management. Someone mentions the name "Ripper" referring to her, and they're talking about how she replaced the guy I dealt with. The former alcohol salesman evidently left the market after a nighttime stabbing in the streets. I hear he's wearing stab wounds in his leg and still coughing from coal dust drying up his throat.

Greasy Sae greets me warily and frowns to see the large bag I have. "Buying or selling today, Foxglove?"

"It's money today," I tell her. "And it's more than I know what to do with, but I have to get rid of it all. Any suggestions?"

"How much do you have in there?" she tries to judge the size of the bag. It's a futile effort; I see her eyebrows curl up in confusion as she's unable to imagine the amount of money I have. She does, however, note, "You got it all from Colton, right?" I understand that she has to remind herself, but I wish she could do it in a way that wouldn't remind me of what I did to him and his wife, Erica.

"Yes," I slowly say, "five thousand dollars, all from Colton. And it can't stay at home; it's not leaving this warehouse."

Greasy Sae drums her fingers on her cauldron of meat stew. Her eyes dart all around the Hob, trying to figure out who needs the money the most, and who can put it to best use. There's her granddaughter, running around and curiously exploring the building, making a good case for Sae to keep it all if she chooses to. She comes up to me, and she says something mumbled in a way I can't understand. When I look back at Sae and open my mouth to ask something, she explains that her granddaughter isn't "all there."

Then she asks me, "Where do you need it to go?" And where I need it to go is back home; there's plenty of things to need back at home, but no way to store any amount of money and use it.

I tell her I heard about Katniss's injury. "And I'm sure you know about it, too. She's a big part of the trade here. She and Gale are, but soon she'll be the only one left out in the woods. Katniss will be the only person bringing a net gain of product into the Hob. We can't afford to lose that." I now set the bag of money in front of Greasy Sae; all five thousand dollars that was Mr. Mellark's share will go to do what Peeta would, presumably, want.

"Half of this money goes towards finding a way to heal her broken arm faster," I demand. "The other half goes towards keeping the Hawthorne family in good condition, because their eldest, Gale, will already give up anything for the Everdeen family."

Greasy Sae listens intently, tilts her head and nods in deep thought about something. She shifts her eyes towards me, examining me on every last square inch of my appearance, and when she levels her head, I can see that she knows exactly what Katniss means to me. "Katniss doesn't display it, but her mother and sister are the greatest healers district 12 has ever seen," Sae says. "What do you really expect us to be able to do that they haven't already tried?"

"We're a creative bunch here," I reply. "I'm sure we can think of something they could do, but just can't afford. It's sad, really, that they can't afford to fix Katniss's arm and, at the same time, can't afford not to. We can't afford not to help either." I point to the sack, knowing that this five thousand dollars that's more than almost anyone in the district- most people in all of Panem, really- has ever seen ought to be enough. "And that's what we have that they don't."

"You know an awful lot about Katniss and Gale," Greasy Sae challenges me. "I think you're closer to them than you're letting on, Foxglove."

"And would you be the one to let everyone know?"

"No," she tells me. "I won't be the leak; I know what happened to the last alcohol dealer. It wasn't too long after you yourself bought something from him. How is that new process coming along, by the way?"

"The alcohol is just a fail safe for the organic formula. But I think we're getting off topic."

"You're right; we are. He was betting that you were the little Everdeen girl, Katniss's dear sister that she talk so much about. But I know better than that. The name Primrose doesn't mean anything to you, does it? That it's just as long as your name, and that it's a plant, just like yours; it's all just a coincidence, right?"

"Absolutely right," I affirm for her, though neither of us really believes it. "Plenty of people here are named for plants. Of course there are some plants whose names are the same length. It only makes sense that there are people whose names share that same property." I don't think it's worth bringing up the fact that foxgloves are poisonous and primroses aren't.

I continue, trying to get back to the money, "I can trust you to get that to them, right?"

"They're both stubborn people," Sae remarks, and it seems she's always right. Both Katniss and Gale hate charity, even each others', and would in no way be inclined to take it from anyone else. But these are extenuating circumstances.

"They'll come around," I tell her. "They have to. Even Gale will recognize when he needs help, if it means he can give more to Katniss." I don't know why it be like it is, but it do.

* * *

Katniss sighs. "We already tried that, Prim. Several times." I've never had the courage to stay in the woods for very long. Katniss has been trying to introduce me for the better part of the past five years, to no avail. For that long, I could never think of doing the same things Katniss does to keep us alive.

Times change. I'm sure she couldn't do half the things I've done now. "One last time," I plead. "As soon as you're ready to go back out, I want to go with you."

It goes without either of us saying that I'm offering to go with her because Gale soon won't be able to. There's always some countdown to the next crisis we have to face, and right now, it's counting down Gale's hunting time. "I know I can't replace him completely," I admit, "but I just want one more chance. I know I can handle it now, and I need to make you see."

"Prim," she says, but nothing follows. She had given up on bringing me out, and the last time we tried is still lingering in her thoughts, whispering to her that taking me along is a bad idea. Those whispers tell her I'd be unable to shake any part of my background as a healer. That I'd still be too merciful to the game, and unable to watch them suffer.

For all the worst reasons, those whispers are wrong.

Katniss offers me one final chance to follow her into the woods, with these conditions: "You're going to have to replace Gale. There's no other way to do this. I'm not sure what we'll be able to do for him. He wouldn't want our help anyway," she scoffs, "no matter how much he needs it." She counts off on her fingers, trying to recollect anything else I should know. "One chance, Prim. No more after this." I know why she has to sound harsh. Our survival is a serious matter. "I think this is going to be a nasty winter. There won't be any margin for error." There never is.

I nod my understanding. Hunting will be tough. Hunting as a cover for drug dealing can only be tougher. "Is there anything I should know beforehand? I think some general knowledge shared now will save some time in summer."

"There's dad's journal," she mentions. "I think you know that as well as I do already." She looks at me and sizes me up. I'm a littler bit scrawnier than Katniss five years ago. "Watch out for large animals; close off wild growing plants from animals eating them. . . That's all I got for the very basics. Give me some time; I'll think of more later."

I hate to make light of her arm, but I say offhand that we have plenty of time. I pick up some bottles of milk- some of our last, by the looks of it- to take to pay the goat man. "Oh yeah, that," Katniss says.

"Yeah," I reply. "This. I have to give back to the goat man somehow, and he wanted milk today. I thought I told you this."

"It slipped my mind in the midst of other things." Like her hunting delay. "Should I go with you? It looks like you're carrying a lot of milk over there."

It's not as heavy as the money I've had to carry, and the pine wood crate we have for the milk bottles is even easier to grip than the bags. "I think I can handle it," I tell her, and pack the bottles into the case and head out.

I see the Peacekeepers starting to swarm the streets of the district as I carry milk to the goat man and the sun begins to set. One of them, perhaps one of the most friendly and the one with the fiery hair, comes up to me. "Hey! Primrose! Where are you going with that?"

"The goat man," I answer him. "He shaved Lady yesterday; we agreed that this would be an acceptable payment."

The redheaded Peacekeeper looks inquisitively at the milk, a strange product to be trading to the goat man in exchange for his services. "Doesn't he provide a lot of the milk in the district?"

"He likes Lady's milk the best. Beats me why."

"Well, Prim, you have a safe walk. Get back home quick; there's a mandatory viewing period soon. You really wouldn't want to miss it."

"I just have to see it, right?"

He pauses to think about what circumstances I'd be in that allow me to see it away from home. It takes him too long to realize I mean to watch from the goat man's house. "I suppose."

"Whatever I need to see, I can see it at the goat man's house." I only tell him this for safe measure, in case he still hasn't figured it out. I trust that he has, but there's no harm making sure.

The Peacekeeper, whose name I learn to be Darius, escorts me to the goat man, and even does the heavy lifting for me. "I had it," I tease him, and in response eh threatens to drop the milk crate. I'll concede that to him. It's too heavy for me to catch.

I pay little attention to the sun during my walk, but I notice the sky darken into a purple hue when Darius and I get to the goat man's house and he thanks me for the milk he thinks is the best in the district. Darius reminds him that it's just about time to watch the games, and the goat man sighs, mentioning that even with the games supposedly on at all hours, his projector and screen haven't been working all day long.

"That's a problem for another district to deal with," Darius explains. "Coal mining really doesn't go to much else besides the trains and metallurgy. I, for one, couldn't fathom making an electric plant powered by coal."

The projector blinks into life soon after Darius leaves, and the goat man mockingly thanks the mayor for finally running the electricity. The presentation of the scene is tightly edited with another filtered top view of the arena. The whiteness of the arena is faded into a dull brown, and a glowing yellow figure moves in a circle about the center of the screen. To either side of the glowing figure are layers of lighter brown, jagged lines, lighter the farther they are from the center.

Several yellow arrows point off the screen towards the top. Red arrows point in all the other directions, and next to some of these red arrows, a symbol of three curves- three arcs of a circle- blinks on and off without any pattern of timing.

Each of the yellow arrows is annotated with several numbers, one of which I bet represents its distance away from whatever the center of the screen is. The cluster of yellow arrows is labeled with ones, a two and a twelve, as well as similar distances that drop at a steady pace. The yellow figure in the middle is marked with an eleven and a fluctuating distance from the center. The red arrows are similarly notated with their distances- all of them dropping fast- from the center of the screen, and consequently the yellow figure marked eleven.

"This is what they're going with?" the goat man asks, chuckling about the low quality of the Hunger Games as presented in this basic filter. "This show's supposed to be exciting. This-" this thing he doesn't have a word in mind for, "this is ridiculous! Surely, no one in the Capitol can get entertained by this!"

He's not wrong. This is pretty boring, but it's not like the Capitol can really control when the tributes do things. Well, to a certain extent, they can, but there's no guarantee that the tributes will be in a "killing" mood when they make us watch. But this: the brown background with yellow and red moving parts; it has to mean something. "The yellow would be tributes, right?" I wonder aloud, and the goat man leans in to take a closer look.

"Certainly looks like it," he comments after seeing the annotations. He thinks about it and his head settles into a rhythm, bobbing up and down, "Yeah, Prim, you're absolutely right; those yellow arrows are tributes!" Which leaves the red arrows to be mutts. And which means that the cluster of arrows with ones and twos is the career pack.

Peeta's still with them. They're closing in on either Rue or Thresh. The mutts are coming as well, and whether it's Rue or Thresh, it looks like they've given up. It looks like they're just waiting for the end to come, and that's when I realize that there's more to this scenario than first meets the eye. That's what the Gamemakers must think is so interesting about the presentation, and what they expect to entertain the Capitol citizens.

"Rue wouldn't just give up," I say. She was one of the first tributes in the history of the games to attack the career alliance from the outside and not only survive, but deal lasting damage. "And I don't think Thresh would just be moping around, either."

The goat man casts me a puzzled look, and I elaborate, "That's what I think the Gamemakers are trying to hide right now. Everything on the screen, from its objective notations to the arrows closing in on the middle; it's all meant to make the Capitol citizens think one way in preparation to surprise them with something else."

The brown lines smooth and fade out. On one side, those brown lines open up into a clearing, which means either that the arena landscape has been changing, or that the eleven tribute is the one who's been moving this whole time. The distance of the careers from the one tribute drops quickly, and it seems they've noticed someone approaching them.

The scene cuts to a distant shot of the career pack, pointed towards the clearing where a small black speck can be seen in the sky. There's a pile of supplies, which I guess they moved there from the Cornucopia because the golden horn itself was in the middle of extremely treacherous terrain. "Smart move," I say, unsure whether I mean the relocation of the supplies, or what I think Rue has in mind as a plan of attack.

The crow's cry puts the careers to a halt, as they try to figure out what to do. Cato point up at it and says, "It's flying in circles. It's following someone."

"Why?" Peeta asks. "Why do that? It could just kill whoever it's chasing on its own, right?"

Cato rejects that notion, "I think it's just a crow. Waiting for its quarry to die before feeding on its remains." Suddenly, there's a faint red haze on the screen that none of the careers are responding to. It's probably just a visual effect, and I notice it's exactly the same red color as the arrows in the filtered, interface view. Cato sees something as the red haze intensifies: "Looks like mutts on the horizon. I count six; quadrupedal. I can't tell much else."

Glimmer, arrow already aimed down from the crow to the gorge, looks out to see the mutts Cato mentioned. The mutts approach fast and seem to grow in size as their distance out shrinks. "They're tracking the crow," she observes, "the crow's following a tribute, and the tribute's headed right for us?" Just as she says it, the crow swoops back out of view, but the mutts press on. "I can see smoke behind them," she adds. "Maybe the tribute's running from a fire."

"Don't know why anyone would run from that in an arena like this," Marvel jokes.

"No idea why that would happen," Glimmer echoes. The crow returns into vision, and it makes its way entirely into the clearing as the camera circles around. We get a good view of the mutts, four legged like Cato deduced, two more creatures than he guessed and all of them coated in a layer of fur that looks like it could cut like really sharp surgical blades.

The rotating camera also shows Rue, hidden in an alcove in the gorge beyond the crow's sight, so the crow just flew past her and into the clearing for the careers to anticipate as a threat. Glimmer fires an arrow at the crow, which preemptively loops its path backwards to avoid the shot. The angry giant porcupine mutts spring into action, as if on the crow's order.

"They're coming," she yells, drawing arrow after arrow and loosing shot after shot towards the incoming mutts. She steps back to the pile of weapons and grabs both a mace and pickaxe to hang on her belt, and returns to shooting at the beasts, alternately firing at them and the crow. "You should all run," she orders.

Just as not a single shot can penetrate the iron-hard hide of the mutts, neither can any land their mark on the crow. On the mutts, though, there's strangely no critical spot to shoot at, as these creatures lack heads. Their legs, too, end in feet that extend both directions, and can bend either way, giving them neither a front nor back side.

One of the beasts lunges at Glimmer, and she throws her bow in the direction the others have escaped, barely avoiding having one of her arms torn off. The rest of the beasts all jump on her back, filling the air with a cacophony of her pained screams and the crow's satisfied screech. She takes the pickaxe and wrenches the one mutt off her back, and she splits it open and spills its mess of internal organs all over the snowy ground.

Hers soon follow, and a cannon blast announces the crow's triumph as the camera pushes in on Rue, hidden in a passage through the side of the gorge. Smirking.

* * *

How long can it be until Katniss finds out? I brought Mr. Mellark into it. Gale found out from the money. Now mom's showing me my own vial of solvent. "What's this for, Primrose?"

I gulp down a few terrible things I could say, swallow down a surge of lies and accept that there's no hiding from mom anymore. "Morphine," I tell her. "I had to do something to prepare for winter. Soon, when Gale's a miner and when winter comes, Katniss just won't be able to keep us alive. I had to do it."

Mom stares at me in disbelief. She opens her mouth to say something, but no words come out, and in silence, she makes mental connections between everything I've done these past couple of days. "Do you really think Katniss won't find out?" is all she asks.

"She can't find out. Whatever I've done," which is useless to still try to hide, "it can't be for nothing." I've already had too big an impact to just extricate myself without any repercussions.

"We can't hide it from her forever," mom warns me.

"We have to." Another long silence follows. Mom examines the catalyst, and looks at me with, not disgust and outrage, but what looks like just disappointment.

She puts the vial in front of my eyes. "Is this the best you could do?" she asks.

"What?"

"Is this," she gives the vial a shake, "the best you could do?"

"I think it is; I haven't tried it yet. Mom, where are you going with this?"

"Prim, you couldn't even keep your," she stalls, searching for the right thing to call it. "Drug business," she settles on, "a secret from me."

"Mom, whatever you do, you can't tell-"

"Prim, just listen to me, alright?" She takes a deep breath, exhales it all and takes another. "You need help. And I know you've been looking for it. My guess is you've got Gale and Mr. Mellark on your side. That night out you took- that was you going to the bakery to discuss something, wasn't it?" She goes on as soon as I nod my confirmation. "Gale, for the same reasons he can't help Katniss much longer, can't help you much longer. Mr. Mellark, I'm sure you'll agree with me, is more interested in helping Peeta than helping us, and as soon as the games end, no matter what happens, he won't be around to hide your production."

"You knew I was making drugs there?"

"I didn't," mom shrugs, "but it was a reasonable guess. And there isn't really another place you could have cooked it away from home. You need someone who can help you, and wants to."

"And that's you?" Mom grins in answer.

* * *

AN: I suppose the moral evaluations are best left to all of you. Also, (spoiler alert in case you just skipped to the ending; but please don't do that) just because someone's first name is the chapter title, doesn't mean that they're guaranteed to be safe. With that said. . .

What do you all think about Glimmer? Rue? Of the three boys left in the career pack, who do you think deserves to win the games, or is it someone else? And where exactly _is _Clove, anyway?

Status of the Seventy-Fourth Hunger Games: 12 deaths; Peeta in career alliance; alliance fleeing with salvage from Cornucopia; Rue has attacked the careers twice; Saige and Clove still unaccounted for


	7. Thresh: See the Smoke

All rights to Suzanne Collins, author of the The Hunger Games trilogy.

* * *

_"Katniss!" he screams. "Are you okay?!" Peeta shambles forwards through the cold that would shatter his skin if he gave up anything that was holding him together. The cold in this arena would do that to anybody, and the worst part of the process is its length. The freezing winds take forever to actually break anybody, but the tributes experiencing it are dying all the way. It has that strange power to deny someone hope- to sap all of his strength away- before finally seizing the life they ultimately turn to value above all else._

_And yes, every time the cold kills someone is merely the finishing touch. The, I will forever regret putting it this way, icing on the cake. In the Hunger Games, death is not enough. Perhaps for the Capitol, it will suffice, but then there would be not reason for the districts to be made to watch it, because death, at the end of the day, is a fact that many people in the districts deal with on a regular basis. We sure have enough of it here in 12. Rather, every death, or at least every one that the Capitol can exert some form of control over, has to be a message to the districts. A punishment, as we are constantly reminded, that comes as part of the Treaty of Treason._

_Thinking back to what Peeta did when he was still with us, about that burnt bread five years back that he was punished for in one way or another, I think I finally understand the way the game is meant to control us. I finally get the message it's supposed to send. That there is no hope. Not here. Not anywhere. I wish he was still with us. He doesn't deserve this._

_Peeta doesn't deserve to be driven insane by a flock of birds screeching with a voice calculated snap his emotions like twigs. It's happening anyway, and he falls for every last bit of it, taking himself into the slush and snow that exist only to draw out his last breath. And then that bloody crow comes back. Not just the crow, an entire corvid gathers in the sky above, which can only mean that countless mutts are on their way to tear Peeta apart- divide him up into square inch pieces of flesh, bone, guts and brain matter that will be sent back to district 12 in little more than a jar or two. He looks around at all the black wings soaring about him, and he knows what's coming but can't do a thing to stop it. Was this that girl's doing again? It's happened once, and there's no reason it can't happen again._

_A harsh wind howls straight down at the ground, and the jabberjays burst into a flurry of frenzied squawking and attempts to escape the crow. Peeta, too, attempts to flee, but without the wings of the spy birds his flight fares far worse. He falls to his knees beneath the slush and begins to sink. There is no icicle for him to grab hold of this time, and this time he doesn't even have the energy to flail his arms. But again, he emerges from the snow; the winds are hot with the heat of the smoke and melt the snow level to reveal a layer of bedrock._

_The beating of the jabberjays' wings slows to provide inadequate lift. Some of the birds struggle to stay airborne, while most of them just drop onto the ground and break every bone in their bodies. It would be a feast if the wind wasn't there to snuff any potential fire, but maybe it would bake the birds itself._

_Peeta is reduced to a crawl, cutting his skin against the rock as the smoke descends upon him and obscures both his vision and mine. Some splattering sounds make it through the wind to signify the death of more birds- jabberjays, not crows. No, those coal-black terrors are fine and flying high above the impeccably directed breeze, watching, from between a dark shadow and the black, desolate smoke._

_Waiting for a dragon._

* * *

Only my count on the parcels helps me keep track of the days that have passed since mom committed herself to help me. Even now, I don't know what to make of it, but I sometimes watch mom test various mixes with the apothecary set that Katniss seems to have forgotten we still have. I almost did, too, but we're both grateful for mom getting back to her glory days, as it were. For far different reasons, of course, as Katniss is just glad to see her do something, while I'm counting on her from right inside the moment.

Those parcels, coming every other day, still have no balm for Katniss's arm, and mom and I have been painstakingly trying everything that gets sent our way. Out of the four parcels we have, which I've lost track of whether they come at the beginning of two days or the end, only one has shown any kind of promise. We're expecting a follow up on that some time tomorrow.

Gale comes in with another game bag he's dead set on sharing with us. He's stopped bringing the poppies, partly because I have enough of those on hand, but mostly because there's something more important at hand. Like with the days, I've lost count on the times Gale's been here, but I think it's been more than once every day. Sometimes he comes to drop off the food we need to make it through the day. Sometimes he comes in to check in on Katniss's arm. Often he comes to talk, and today's he's here for all three.

Katniss swallows down as door creaks to a close, knowing that as long as her arm's broken, it's useless to try to turn Gale down. Unfortunately, not even the prospect of his family needing all the game he brings back can deter him from channeling it straight to us. That doesn't stop her from trying.

"Gale, you need this."

"You need it too, Catnip." As she opens her mouth to protest, he goes on, "Really, you need it, more than I do right now. And you're going to take it, even if we have to go through the entire routine every time, alright?"

After a brief pause, Katniss lifts her eyes from the ground. For a long time they just look at each other, with a purpose I can't even begin to decipher until Katniss continues with something that doesn't follow from the last thing Gale said. "Where did they come from?"

"It has to be the Hob, it's the only place I can think of. Now why they put me before you, Catnip, I'll never get that. But I'm not going to do the same."

"Gale, you really don't have to do this for me, okay?" She sighs, and rests her head back down on the mattress. She's been effectively bedridden since her accident and has hated every second of it, I know. Sometimes she helps cook, mostly instructing us how to cut certain animals that we haven't seen before. "We've been worse off than this before-"

"And I don't want to see you there ever again."

There's another pause before the topic shifts again. Katniss asks, "How many did you get?"

"They're sending me food every day. They won't take it back and they won't let me pay for it. Nobody at the Hob will even tell me who it's coming from. Hell, they even pretend they didn't send it!"

"How much do you figure it's worth? And why'd you try giving it back?"

"It didn't look like much, but just keeps coming. I'll tell you, it's even more consistent than what we were pulling out of the woods last fall."

I remember how in autumn of 73, Katniss sometimes had to make two trips a day for up to a week at a time. Just to carry everything back home. It was the perfect way to prepare for winter, and the biggest push in her cooperation with Gale. This coming autumn, for a whole list of reasons, cannot be any better than the last. It makes me light up for all the wrong reasons to hear I'm already equaling that output.

"That much- Gale, why give it back? You have more people counting on you than I do! It's why we always split our take in your favor: you have a family of four plus yourself to feed, and you're telling me that you're trying to give away something you need."

"No, we don't. We've done well for ourselves; we don't have to take handouts."

"It's not a handout- don't you think they're giving it to you for a reason? The Hob needs you, and it needs me, too. Everything they're giving us now, they expect back later." She looks at her arm again. Her gaze lingers there until she closes her eyes. "When we're better able to pay it back."

He looks at her arm with her. Gale reaches out to it, hanging his hand not half an inch off for just a moment to assure her that his touch will weigh less than a feather. He is every bit as gentle as he silently promises. "We?" he asks. "What have you gotten from them?"

"Mom and Prim," Katniss nods her head towards us, "are getting all kinds of medical supplies for my arm. Nothing's worked," she pauses and cranes her head in. "They're trying, though. I can't deny them that."

"Who has spare supplies in 12?"

"Someone," she shrugs. "Someone who wants us back on our feet as soon as possible."

"Everyone wants that. Are you saying everyone has spare medicine laying around?"

"No, Gale, I won't go that far. Look, I don't know. I just want to make it through this. Now, all the way through winter, I just want to make it through without going back to starvation. Don't you want that for yourself as well?"

"I want that for everyone, Catnip."

"I wish I could want that, Gale, but it has to start somewhere. Who can we take care of if not the people closest to us?"

"Don't worry about that. We'll get through winter. We always have."

"We always have," she echoes. "Together. I've never done it alone."

"You know I'll never let you have to handle anything alone; I'll be right there with you, no matter what."

"Gale?"

"What is it?"

"Stop giving food back. You need it. As much as I do."

* * *

Mom tells me this one, this catalyst, works perfectly. She assures me that the formula is reliable and sustainable on some common enough herbs outside the district fence. I carry it along with the plants to the bakery for a cook that is both well overdue and forbidden. Circumstances haven't changed much, either. As of yesterday, there are still twelve tributes left. The only notable thing that's happened to them is the discovery of a large metal foundry, which was the source of the smoke seen so much. It's a nice change of scenery, this contrast of ice and fire. If they weren't bent on killing up to two dozen children every year, the Gamemakers would have no problem finding creative employment. It really is a shame that it's the Hunger Games above everything else that get such careful thought put into their creation.

The boy from district 3 showed an interesting way to get sponsorship gifts delivered. Even in the factory, Peeta can be helped, and everyone else who's not in the arena knows it to be true, for him and all the other tributes. In the factory, Peeta looks like he may well be at home. Everything in it, all the furnaces, belts and machines bear resemblances to the equipment in the bakery at a much more durable and sophisticated level.

"He still has a chance," I tell Mr. Mellark, "and it's getting better. Now, that's not to say he doesn't need your help, in fact, he needs it now more than ever."

"So that's why you're here? You're here to cook again?" He has his arms crossed and he's absently looking past me at something across the street. His head tilts for something that catches his interest, and I turn around to see it, too. It's nothing more than a space between house walls. "There's something of mine in there, can you go pick it up for me, please?"

I raise my eyebrows and cast him a questioning look, but Mr. Mellark just nods and adds, "It's pretty far in. Bring your wagon, wouldn't want someone to snatch it off the street." There's such a stigma against thievery in district 12 that his caution doesn't make any sense. And not just a heavy stigma, but also a legal death penalty which serves as a double deterrent. Nobody would just steal a wagon that they don't even know the contents of. I realize he's just looking for an excuse for me to be out of sight while he gets his family out.

I drag the wagon full of poppies into the alley, hearing the door shut behind me. Once I'm settled in, I look on the ground to see if Mr. Mellark really did put something here. I find a mound of dirt that seems to rise out of the ground. Reaching down for it, the mound crumbled over a half buried tin can with a few dozen coins inside. They're so perfectly stacked and spaces that they don't shake with the can, for lack of room to move around.

As he and the rest of the Mellark family leave their home with loud footsteps, I wonder where else Mr. Mellark has hidden parts of the money this way, and just how much was lacking from the five thousand dollars I told Greasy Sae there was in that bag.

But the time for wondering is over, and it's now time to cook.

It's another hour of crushing poppy plants, boiling water and extracting morphine. The extracting part is just as boring as last time, but I place the first few drops of extract into the solution I have boiling, and it's evident immediately that it both works faster and is more efficient. I remember the morphine to extract ratio being lower last time. Mom's definitely done something right, and as I rush to get through all the poppies, I watch a pile of waste get higher and higher.

The separation solution rises higher in the pot as the morphine sinks to the bottom. It leaves me curious whether I could just put a crushed plant inside and extract the drug that way, but that seems like something best tested at home. I'll have a chance for that soon. More pressingly, some of the solution spills out of the pot, and I shut off the fire as soon as I hear the hot water hissing on the stove-top.

Heat from the fire is radiating off the metal of the pot, and there's so much of it that it even bleeds through to the insulated handle. It burns by the touch, making it difficult for me to hold it steady and control it carefully enough to pour the water out into the sink without losing the morphine underneath. I cringe as nearly a quarter of an ounce is lost.

My raw skin is exposed, the dead layer stripped off by the heat. I can treat that later; now I have to package this morphine that there's over twice as much of as last time. I look around for containers, and I end up stealing enough stuff that the Mellark family is guaranteed to notice by the time they're back, but I have no choice. Everything valuable goes back under the concealing tarp I have for my wagon, and the leftover poppy matter goes into the fire. I wash out the residue from the pot and take my leave.

My first instinct is to take the drugs to the Hob. Katniss absolutely cannot learn about its existence, and having the morphine itself at home is the best way to tip her off, even with her broken arm. Morphine, money, whatever it is, it can't stay at home. As for the five thousand dollars that are still- hopefully, at any rate- hidden under the dresser, I want to give that to Mr. Mellark as an advance payment for this sale.

After all, he doesn't know when it will happen. For all he knows, the games will be over by the time I sell this batch. And he also doesn't know a thing about how big this batch is. Five thousand dollars- as much money as he's ever seen at once- should be enough.

I see Peacekeepers interrogating people at the Hob. From what I overhear, they're asking about an increase in the transportation of medical supplies from the abandoned warehouse and the consistent timing of the carriers leaving from and returning to the Hob. They're asking about the parcels getting sent to fix Katniss's arm; they just don't know it.

"Several hundred dollars worth of medication have passed this door this last week," one of them gives me my first hint into just how foreign this excess of money really is. Of course, I already knew that ten thousand dollars is an unfathomable sum, but just so, unfathomable describes what the money can be put towards. "I imagine it cost a substantial factor more to get a hold of such supplies here," the Peacekeeper adds with a certain contempt. A contempt that indicates that he's not from district 12; but from what is most likely the Capitol itself.

Greasy Sae is talking to him; other shopkeepers have different interrogators to deal with. "It's all going to one household," she freely admits, "the Everdeen household. Their eldest daughter is one of the pillars of the district, and she recently broke her arm. It's been a real tragedy for all of us, and we all felt the need to pool together to help her recover as quickly as possible."

"And the Capitol grade medicine?"

"Well, that's the only grade of medicine powerful enough to help out, now," she retorts.

"Head Peacekeeper Cray was placing more orders for those than he is normally rationed. If I ask him, is he going to tell me that you've been buying those off of him?"

"He probably won't tell you, but that's what's been going on." Greasy Sae glances over at me long enough for the Peacekeeper to notice.

"What's she doing here?" the Peacekeeper asks.

"I speak for myself," I say to Greasy Sae as she turns back to come up with an answer. "I deliver the supplies to the Everdeens. I met them a few years ago, before their father passed away, when they came to trade." I nod to Sae, and she nods back to tell me she's keeping up with my fiction. "They really bridged that gap between everyone, whether in town, the Seam, or the black market-"

"The Everdeens involved themselves in illegal trade willingly?"

"The more meritorious parts of it, yes. There are always some goods that people will just find ways to trade." Alcohol, weapons, drugs and prostitution services being the most base among them. "Far as I remember, and, Sae, I remember this right, right?"

"She absolutely does, officer," she affirms. "She's got an astounding memory."

"Yeah, far as I remember, the Everdeen family never dealt in the depraved side of the market; they just helped connect everyone and found a level of trading integration that served everyone's needs. And, really, by neglecting the bad of it, they didn't do anything actually illegal. Wouldn't you agree?"

The Peacekeeper hesitates, trying to puzzle out what to make of my false praise for my family. His discomfort shows in his facial expressions, and he evades the question altogether, simply asking what Katniss's role in it is.

"As I said, Mr. Everdeen passed away. It was during a mine explosion; he was there to help the evacuation when it was discovered that a section of the mines was unstable. He. . . he gave up his own life to save many others. His first daughter, Katniss, took over the operation ever since."

"So," the Capitol Peacekeeper tries to summarize the story, "Katniss Everdeen, a pillar of the district community, broke her arm doing something, and it's not the mayor, or the local Peacekeeper Corps, or even her neighbors but the local black market that takes the initiative to help her recover? Is this about right?"

"Just about," Greasy Sae offers.

"Okay," the officer says. He calls his troops to move on with their assignment, and he is just about to clear out with them. "Just- one more thing," he returns to us with. "There's a statement about two deaths here. One Colton Rudgi and his wife Erica. Attributed to a morphling overdose. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"

"No," Greasy Sae answers immediately. She elaborates, "For all the drugs that do get traded here, morphling is not among them. It's too hard to come by; Cray does too good a job keeping it under tight control." She finishes muttering, "Unlike a lot of other things, which could stand to use some more diligent watch."

"Well, there's something off happening here," the officer declares. "The statement says something about a bunch of foxgloves. Whatever poison you have here, I suggest you strike it out as soon as you can. Eradicate it, before you can't." On that note, the officer goes to join his troops on their other investigation.

"So, Foxglove," Greasy Sae addresses me as soon as the Peacekeeper is out of earshot. "Do you actually want to be the one to carry it? I mean, you paid for all of it."

"I'll take it this time," I say. Sae loads a box of Capitol chemicals used to some medical effect onto the tarp of my wagon. She lifts the cover for a peek inside, and frowns to see another, bigger batch of morphine hidden inside.

"Foxglove, nobody can afford that."

"Someone can afford it," I tell her. "Someone in Panem can afford this and more. And if you can't find those people, I will. Thanks for the medicine. I'm expecting another in two days." I leave the Hob with my immobile batch of drugs and only a vague idea where I want to hide it.

* * *

Lady baas her protest to my decision to hide the morphine in her shack. I don't have any idea where would be less likely to be searched than Lady's shack, so I lay the containers with the painkillers in short stacks and cover it up with some straw I picked up across the district. Lady's milk bucket serves as another layer of cover to the hay bale disguise. As she bleats, I rub her body to calm her down from. To assure her that this is only temporary, and that it doesn't even have to be too different. She quiets but doesn't calm. She's still tense, like she knows something I don't.

"Hey, Katniss," I say as I walk in the door. "Mom. I found this where I normally keep the wagon. Another parcel for the arm, right on time." I hand the box over to mom, and when she takes it out to take a look, after a quick examination on it, I note, "Looks like a painful one." Katniss groans behind me, and I turn around and shrug. "Sorry about that, Katniss. It might work, though. I think it has a better chance than anything else we've used."

Mom squints, but Katniss isn't looking, and quickly puts herself in the mindset I have. "We're going to need a sedative on this one, dear," she tells Katniss, who cringes to hear that she'll have to be unconscious for a while as we operate on her in a way we can't describe right now. She's understandably nervous, but her faith in our medical authority never wavers.

Mom has been helping us test the uses of the various herbs these past couple of days. She takes the blue comfrey herbs and grinds them up into a paste for Katniss to swallow. This, she says, will put Katniss to sleep long enough for the remedy to be applied without her feeling any of the pain. Mom upholds that this particular medicine is extremely sensitive and as a result, difficult to use with conscious patients.

Katniss, still reluctant to make herself pass out, listens to mom and swallows the sedative paste. Mom spends a long time watching Katniss, making sure she's soundly sleeping. Once she's sure of it, she turns to me and asks, "What did you need her asleep for?"

I point under the dresser. "There's five thousand dollars Katniss can never know about, and after tonight, never will. I just needed an opportunity to bring it out of the house without her noticing. I'm going to get rid of it."

"Get rid of it," mom echoes thoughtfully. "What does that mean, exactly?"

"I'm giving it to Mr. Mellark. I just finished another cook with the extraction agent you made. It's brilliant," I give her a shining smile, and I see her lips curl up in pride as well. "It's a payment for letting me use his bakery again. That, and he had to give me his cut from last time."

"I see," mom assents. "So what about this time? Does he get a cut out of this batch?"

"He shouldn't. Technically, he's already paid. And he's been stashing some money wherever he can think of. After I drop this off, he's not getting another buck out of me." I take the heavy bag of money out from its ensconce, and drag it to the door. Mom asks how much it is. I answer her that it contains just a little under five thousand dollars for Mr. Mellark.

"How much is your new batch worth?" she follows up. "If you have an idea."

"Ten times that," I guess.

It's nearly nightfall when I head out, and nearly time for the mandatory viewing period. I take the bag of money over my shoulder, remembering what happened last time I went to the bakery in the shadows. I don't have those pins this time around, but this time, I have what I imagine to be a much more powerful weapon. My reputation.

Greasy Sae seemed uncomfortable saying my false name. The few times I've been inside, everyone seemed to be on edge from the moment I entered the building to the moment I left. On and off, the tension went with me like I was a switch. Apparently, the name Foxglove carries a strong set of connotations now, because of the things I've done. No one would dare attack me.

Gale sees me leaving and runs up to me, "Prim, do you need a hand with that?"

I heave some heavy breaths for lifting the heavy sack of money. "Yeah," I exhale, "that'd be really good, thanks. Right to the bakery is fine."

"Back to the Mellark place." Gale picks up the money, but goes nowhere. He just thinks about the bakery, and notes, "I'm not sure if the Peacekeepers are done there yet."

"What are they doing there?" He doesn't really need to answer me, because the Peacekeepers can't be doing anything at the bakery except look for evidence of me cooking morphine. Which they'll then pin on Mr. Mellark, just like his wife did, because they know even less about me than she does.

I'm fine with it staying that way.

Gale says that the search team is doing just that, looking for something, but he doesn't know what, which I find perplexing because he knows about the morphine cooks I do there, and that seems like it would be the first thing Peacekeepers would be searching for. Gale reasons that the Capitol is unable to focus on information that specific, so they must be investigating something more widely known. He says something about the Hunger Games, and everything in my mind clicks into place.

"They're looking for his money," I claim. "Mr. Mellark's bottom line was sponsoring Peeta, and I think he went overboard with it. So, no, it's not a drug search, but it's the next closest thing: an audit, which," I sigh. "Put the bag down, Gale. I'll carry it myself."

"Shouldn't you stay as far away from this as possible?" He questions by logic but drops the bag anyway. He doesn't want me the get hurt.

"I talked to them once," I tell Gale. "They don't know a thing about me."

"Exactly! Prim, they don't think you're involved. You should keep it that way."

When I stop to think about it, I really do have every reason not to go. I never even told Mr. Mellark that I'd give him my five thousand dollars in the place of splitting the next sale, and I don't remember whether we reached a point where we both understood that would happen. Gale's right. If I go, I risk getting entangled in the investigation the Peacekeepers are making, and then there's no chance of hiding the operation forever. But one little thing bothers me about the thought of not going to bring him the money.

Mom told me that he wouldn't be able to hide my production system for very long, and I realize that I'm worried he'll expose it right now. What's more, Gale is also not going to be a factor, and I have to prepare to make choices without his input. That's probably the easy part.

"I'm bringing this to him, and you're not." I get one last look at his face before I go, and what's there is not worry. It's not condescension, either. It's the kind of fear that someone experiences when they see a ghost.

Gale has finally met Foxglove.

* * *

I need to get a barrel for this. That would be fun, to just roll a barrel full of money around rather than have to pick up sacks and hold them. Maybe just a better bag for money. Something that's more than a sack, really, that's all I need.

The Peacekeepers are still there at the bakery as I approach. They're all focused on the bakery and the family in it, so I double back and pick up coal dust from the ground and pack it into the sack until it dampens all the sound from the money jingling. By the time the bag stops making noise, I've gotten far on the path back home, and as I go to the bakery again, I count each step as a unit of how much coal dust I had to pick up.

I start coughing from an awfully dry throat, which is the consequence of messing with coal dust. That and my hands are black. It's fine; I can say I fell over because this bag is heavy. It comes close to being exactly what happened. I do almost fall over on my way back. Holding the bag stings where the burn wound still is, and the coal dust isn't making it any more bearable. I struggle not to drop it, for that would definitely reveal its contents, whether the coins spill out or not.

Their leader notices me coming this time. He lets me walk all the way to the door before asking me my name, saying, "I never asked you before."

So now I have to think of a third identity, and the Mellark family has to catch on that I'm projecting a totally new truth. But I take too long in thought, and whatever I say probably won't be believed. I start nodding like I've thought of something to say, and when the officer prods me for my name again, I slowly answer him, "Primrose Everdeen."

"So that medicine was for your sister?"

"That is what that means," I admit.

He looks at the bag I have. "Then what's this?"

"It's a sack of flour," I say. "Forgotten, lost, maybe even stolen, I don't know. I found it over there," I point down the way I came. "It passed my notice the first time; I went back to get it. It was well hidden, I have to say."

The Peacekeeper chortles, "You're just a good Samaritan all around, aren't you?" He grabs the sack and lifts it up himself. His mouth opens slightly, and he just beholds the sack of money and coal dust. He sees some of the black smears on it and looks at me and my black hands. "Eh, I hate to disparage good intent, but," he mutters, and then asks me, "What happened to your hands?"

"The district's full of coal dust," I shrug. "We get used to it here." I fall into a coughing fit, and I hold up my hand. I don't need help, this is just the coal dust drying my throat again. We get used to it. But the thing that the Peacekeeper sees is not the dust caked surface of my hand, but the burn showing through the cover. "Make sure they get it," I ask him and take my leave.

* * *

AN: It's been a long time, hasn't it? Would you have believed me last chapter if I said things would get shorter? Do you believe me now when I say I still have over a thousand more words to post before the next chapter can begin?

I'd like to introduce interludes: updates that aren't complete chapters. There's a lot of Hunger Games action missing from this chapter, and I'm dreadfully sorry for that, but this was just taking too long. I'll post the games in an interlude soon. If there are any suggestions for how to handle it, I'm open to anything.

And yes, I did watch the Desolation of Smaug.

Status of the Seventy-Fourth Hunger Games: 12 deaths; Peeta in career alliance; tributes relocated to a factory still production capable; Rue and the crow now at large; Saige and Clove still unaccounted for


	8. Thresh: Fan the Fire

All rights to Suzanne Collins, author of the The Hunger Games trilogy.

* * *

_It's been a long week in the arena, though I've only seen an hour or so of it each day. There's been a mass exodus from the ice region. Well, sort of; half the tributes have left the cold behind and entered a huge factory complex full of fire. Impressively, there are still twelve tributes alive. There hasn't been a death since Glimmer died to Rue's second cunning depredation._

_Caesar and Templesmith spent some time talking about the crow mutt that she used in the attack. Now, a bit of a tangent here, for some reason it doesn't sound the least bit weird to refer to Caesar by his first name and Templesmith by his last, even right next to each other. Perhaps one explanation for it is that Caesar is so much more familiar a face that the whole country is on a first name basis with him. His massive presence in the advertising industry, while largely ignored and only known vaguely in the districts where there are better things to do, helps on that front. Templesmith is famous more for his voice than his image, placing distance between him and the audience. Hence, he's either Templesmith or Claudius Templesmith. Either he's distant or mythical, but either way he's not the same close bond Caesar is._

_At any rate, they spent time talking about the crow mutt that Rue used, and the crow is a pretty terrifying creation. They keep saying it's extremely smart, and the day after Glimmer was killed, they even brought its designer, Gamemaker X Marcellus, whose name has its own story, to an interview about its specifications. It's made to be able to automate the arena controls. In this way, the crow can attack tributes more aggressively than any other mutt or Gamemaker weapon. As he put it, "It is every mutt and weapon in the arena. It is the arena itself." It is the single biggest demonstration of Capitol technology there is in all of Panem, and it is being wasted on a bird that controls countless death machines._

_Still, it's good that the Capitol at least has something it takes a reasonable amount of pride in. It helps them hide the fact that our contempt is aimed at the oppression they stand for rather than the things they accomplish. The games can be flashy or dull, gentle (as much as death can be such) or horrific, orderly or chaotic, but they will not cease to be the games we hate._

_The boy from district 3 is still in his desolate sanctum, building something as he's been doing for as long as I remember seeing him. His project has never actually been seen, from what I understand, ironically or otherwise. It has to be big enough to take up most of the room and restrict him to the outside, and from the looks of his most recent actions, he's nearly finished. He's put together tons of metal and hundreds of moving parts. The room was once full of machinery. Until he got his sponsorship gift, he took everything that wasn't attached to the walls or floor and took them apart for components. Once he got that gift, which was some sort of shear, he took everything that was._

_The only thing he didn't deconstruct- the only thing he didn't touch- was the door, and that was because there were things on the other side touching it a lot. Nowhere in the arena is complete without mutts, so the Capitol has a bunch of robots behaving like Peacekeepers throughout the factory. They are unbelievably practical in their design. Even more incredibly, though it should come at no surprise, the rest of the factory machinery functions as a vast array of traps for the Gamemakers to deploy either at the push of a button or through any sort of trigger in the arena itself._

_I get the sense the factory was meant to be abandoned. For good reason, of course. There are passing shots of lunchboxes scattered on the floor or laid out in lines on tables, and annotations on the screen tell whether their contents are still edible or not. Mostly not, and some are even empty. But among the empty boxes, cheese swarming with flies, mold clusters that cover breadcrumbs, poisoned fruits put in as traps, fruits that haven't been tampered with but are so dry that they'd suck all the moisture out of someone's throat like the coal dust at home, and the live, silent, blue glowing three feet long worms (I bet the Capitol got a kick out of this one. Or all just threw up. I know I did.), there's the rare chance to find some form of sustenance._

* * *

**Cato**

It should have been me. I should have stayed to fight those things in the clearing. I don't know why I didn't. It's been a week now, it's too late to be thinking of this. We have warmth and shelter. As much of it as can be found in the arena of the Hunger Games. We're in a factory, or a foundry. I can't tell which and there isn't much of a difference anyway. We've been here for a past few days, carefully rationing that last bit of salvage while searching for food. The place is a wreck, but it looks oddly familiar.

Searching for food has been taxing. There's a plethora of boxes. Marvel and I can't walk anywhere for a minute without seeing a bunch of boxes. Peeta can, but that's just his poor eyesight at work. Like back in the cave when he tripped on the wire. I'm sure someone could have seen that. But finding the boxes isn't the dumb part, the dumb part is figuring out what's inside. Peeta had the idea to shake the boxes first. I didn't want to say anything, but it soon became apparent that whatever sound the box makes when we shake it doesn't mean anything. Anything could be in the box.

If something rattles against every side, it's either something canned, or a bug with a hardened carapace. If it sounds like it sticks against one side, it's either something squishy or something so moldy it became squishy. No sound at all is the biggest gamble. That means there's either enough food to have the whole box packed, or a mutt that's squeezed inside. After seeing a nightmarish wolf unfold itself from the compact form it took while enclosed, we've stopped opening any box that doesn't make a sound. And then Marvel started stabbing those boxes first, for good measure.

It figures the one box we try that on would have a hornet colony in it, ready to deplete the last of our water supply in fending it off. We haven't opened any noiseless boxes since. We haven't searched the factory for water, either. That's a whole new can of worms.

So we have food, when we can find it. We have warmth in abundance, with rows of furnaces in rooms dotted all over the place and what feels like a bed of magma perpetually right beneath us. Yeah, warmth in this place is no problem. Shelter is pretty inconsistent. All sorts of things attack all the time. Rotating watches has gotten to the point where only one person sleeps at a time.

Still, it's safer than out there in the cold. . .

Oh damn it, Clove's still out there. Bless her for making it this far, but I almost don't want to know what shape she's in. I grab my sword and get up to leave.

Peeta, who's up for this watch with me, asks, "Cato, where are you going?" He has to. It's a rule we have for this double watch that if someone leaves, he has to tell where he's going. And the other person has to remind him by asking.

"I'm going back outside," I answer. Back to the cold to find Clove and to just get away from this factory. Not even any of its dangers; those, I can handle fine. It's the factory I have to get away from. It reminds me of something, and I don't like it.

There's a sign of worry on his face. Peeta leans in towards me and breathes in, but just looks down. He scratches his head, "Is there something wrong?"

"It's. . ." I try to figure out a way to excuse myself. I don't think I can make him believe me if I lie to him. "It's something I should tell you about, but can't. I'm going to look for Clove."

"She's got to be in awful shape by now," he argues. "Do you still think she's worth saving?"

"Were you worth saving twice?" Peeta slumps his head in defeat. I fall right back down, remembering when I asked Glimmer why she dove into the water. I couldn't tell what she saw in him. There wasn't a single reason apparent to me that should make her put herself at risk of freezing and drowning to get him out. I asked her about it.

I remember asking her, "_Was he worth saving?"_

She was soaking wet, shivering with the icy water sucking the heat right out of her skin like a leech. She looked at me, with her piercing green eyes in mine, and she told me, _"As much as you are."_

I've since stopped thinking myself worth saving.

"If you're going to go, I'm not going to stop you." So I nod and do. Peeta doesn't stop me; he can't, and he doesn't even try. He grips his knife harder, preparing himself for a watch all alone.

I pass a few patrolling robots on my way out. They're always shoddily build, and I hack them apart with ease. That knife Peeta has will hold fine in a fight with these. A surprise saw blade nearly rips my left arm off. I pull it back in time to keep the arm, but I lose two fingers and all the air in my lungs. A sharp exhale, not a scream, and practically silent. Quiet enough that no one comes my way for the next few minutes. The blade also breaks apart after spilling my blood.

I morbidly pick up a piece and see a bird imprinted on it. A tanager, it looks like: the symbol of a district 2 mining hardware company. At first I'm amazed that this is allowed. I soon realize that the Capitol still has no idea about STEEL's existence. I throw the shard down and run for the exit as fast as I can.

If the Capitol knew about STEEL, it would rather see a mockingjay than a tanager.

* * *

**Clove**

Cold. Cold.

I don't even know what miracle I'm waiting for. It hasn't come since I settled into this alcove. It hasn't come since I just barely escaped drowning at the very start of the games. There's no help coming for me; there's no help and there's no hope.

That boy who tackled me into the water was from district 9. His name was Rensly, and I remember that when he was reaped, he hugged his older sister and looked up towards the sun. It looked like he was trying to find guidance; it looked like he was ready to sprint towards it. He looked like an adventurer, and he had that same adventurous look underwater. He was fifteen years old. I can't recall any tribute I've ever seen from district 9 who wasn't fifteen years old. Fifteen exactly, not a year to either side. They're even more consistent then we are.

Rensly and I were swept away by a strong current, and we were helpless to do anything but hold our breaths. I held mine longer, and washed up alive next to the vest of knives I was reaching down to grab at the Cornucopia. One swim earlier, and I would have thought it a weapon.

Now, it's my only lifeline. It's one of the only things keeping me alive in the cold, and then only because I've learned that knives are good for more than spilling blood. That, I've done absolutely none of. No, wait, I've made one cut at the beginning. I think I was Saige, but it doesn't matter now. Nothing really matters now, on my knees and in the snow.

I'm cold; I'm starving; Atala was right. Violence isn't the leading source of death in the arena. I'm glad my life will at least serve as a warning to others. It'll certainly change the games somehow. I'm trying to convince myself that's the case. My death- it's inevitable, and it's coming soon- should at least mean something to someone.

Listening to the chirping of mockingjays outside is the one comfort this arena grants me. The valley is covered with snow only up to a foot, and I find it just soft enough to lie down and listen and not worry that I'll sink and suffocate. The last thing I want is to face being choked to death again. Sometimes, the birds start singing, and they always begin with the same four note tune like they've been trained.

I do have to worry about finding food though, and I get out to see the mockingjays perched over the aperture in the cliff face I found. Killing a mockingjay's an awful thing akin to killing hope. It's more than just a bird; it's the symbol of everything the Capitol does wrong. But I pluck a knife out from my vest and throw it anyway.

Even while it's numb from everything the arena has done to it, my arm never fails to give me a true shot. The one bird falls off its perch, and the rest scatter to safety out of my sight, but not out of earshot. I get a glimpse of one's eyes, and immediately, I shut mine in remorse. Fallen to my knees again, I crawl to the bird's carcass and take it back to the alcove with the knife still embedded.

Cutting the feathers off and the bones out of the bird takes up all my attention. I place each one in a small pile beside me, and then I look at the skinned, boned, raw mockingjay and wonder about cooking it. I take out another knife, carelessly, not even paying attention to choose which two to strike together. I try to spark the pile of feathers. It's hard to do with the wind and cold trying to eat the flame. Eventually, a fire catches and survives.

A handful of snow extinguishes this flame too, just as I'm holding the raw bird over it. I see a booted foot fall on my arms, and I look up to see Saige standing- towering, really, as I'm practically on my back- over me. She was the one I threw a knife at during the bloodbath. I find myself shaking my head. I'm a small person, and it's hard to look at her in any way but straight up, and there is a whole pile of other circumstances in play here, but the emptiness in her gaze makes Saige look more threatening than I've ever seen Cato at his worst.

She moves her knife to my neck and asks, "Where are the others?"

"I don't know," I whisper out. "I don't know anything about them. I haven't seen them since day one. Where's Peeta?"

"Same story here. I haven't seen him since day one. I was thinking of asking you that, actually. Rue told me he's with them."

"He may be. But I'm not."

"No one coming?"

My teeth start chattering. I'm extremely nervous for what's about to happen in the next few seconds. Either that, or it's the fact that I'm freezing, and it's very well both. Through all that, I can just barely answer, "Nobody."

Her breath- because what does she have to fear?- is steady, and her grip on the knife doesn't relax even a bit. I may have just talked my way into getting killed, but if Saige wants to kill me, it doesn't matter what I say. Not with her foot still planted on my wrists and her knife to my throat. If she came here to kill me, I'd already be dead.

Instead, she lets one of my hands free. "I'm as anxious a wreck as you are. And I'm pretty jumpy," she tells me, pressing the blade against my skin. I can feel the pressure on the one point of my neck, about to tear and bleed. "So if you try anything, my hand will slip, and you will die." I prop my other arm against the ice and rock cliff side. I grip the first hold I can get my hands on to remain calm.

Saige grabs the zipper of my vest and starts to undo it. I have to lean my head back because she pulls my entire body up against the knife point, and even that doesn't stop the edge from slicing my skin. A sharp gasp escapes me as I struggle not to get cut any further. Once she unzips my vest entirely, she pauses, then tells me, "Roll over."

I try to back up against a wall of the alcove, but Saige holds the knife still against my moving body, tracing an open cut down to my chest.

"Over," she repeats, withdrawing the blade just a little bit. And having completely lied about being jumpy, I note. Seriously, she's adamant with her grip. I oblige her and turn over, putting my back to her and Saige tugs my vest right off, dragging my arms along by the sleeve holes. It's just sharp enough a motion that I try to hold in a whimper.

She leaves me after that. She goes further down the valley, and the last and most shocking thing I see is just how big the vest looks on her.

* * *

**Thresh**

Mockingjays and the four note tune from home. End of the work day. Somewhere up this valley. That's where I'll find Rue. I head up. I'm going to find her.

The crow is bad news. She's hanging around with it. Has been for a while. It hasn't killed her yet. Killed a career instead. That pretty girl from 1. I saw her face in the sky. I saw the crow circling around too. Same day. It was the crow's kill. No. That's not true. Rue's kill. She controls the crow.

But I don't for how long. I have to find her. I can protect her. Whatever the crow does doesn't matter if I'm around. Nothing will take her away from me. Not under my own watch.

There's another career in the valley. Big guy from 2. I've seen in in training. His moves are heavy. He sweeps wide and strong. Every single hit is a crushing blow. I have a curved one edge sword and a bag full of ice. They give me a good stride. No chance to catch him off guard anyway.

They also give me priorities. I have to knock his sword away first. Can't block against it forever. There's just no way that will happen. After that. After that make him mad. Only thing bigger than his muscles is his temper. He fights like that and without his sword I can beat him. I can kill him.

"What you looking for, tough guy?" He turns around. He glares. He scowls.

He also answers, "I'm looking for my district partner." His sword is half ready and I'm not close enough yet. And he adds, "Same as you, I'll bet."

I sling the ice bag into my hand. "You gonna go there? Say she's a killer like you are?" I put my other hand on my own sword and advance towards him. Slower pace. No rush now.

He looks at me funny. It gets my blood boiling. Even in this ice valley. "She is," he taunts me. "She's as much a fighter and a killer as any of us. But you're not." I'm close to him now. I'm almost there to kill him. To prove him wrong.

He lunges at me with his sword. I stumble back out of reach. He slashes the strap of the ice bag. It's impossible to carry now. I rip the strap off. It'll do for a weapon if I need it. I draw my sword to block his. Giant overhead swing that I can barely push to the side. I see snow mounds up the valley. Just a short glimpse before the career prepares to plunge his sword into me. I kick him off and get back on my feet. He barely keeps his balance. Finds some stable footing and attacks again. Takes a piece out of my shoulder like that. Would have taken more without my blade in the way. I glide my sword along his. One of his fingers falls off. Falls into the snow. His sword lands next to it.

But there's no time to celebrate. He grabs my sword arm wrist. Pulls me down. He sends my face right into his knee. He wrenches my sword out of my left hand. I push him back up against a wall. I try to. He stops me and I feel the bite of steel on my leg. He kicks me in the stomach and drops me. To go around and finish me off. Then a cannon sounds.

I turn to look and blood splatters into my face. There's a gash on his neck. Another on his chest going the other way. Someone behind him has a knife all over his chest. Has a hand twisting his head sideways. It hurts. Has to if he's screaming. A pool of red surrounds them. The red's in his whole outfit. It used to be a lighter red. Used to be like fire. Now it's barely blood stains. The knife exposes his organs. There's not a scrap of skin left to his neck. Hardly anything to be seen of his torso. Just a small steel shard sticking in his heart. He coughs up something. Something. I don't know what. Could be anything that was still in him.

He slumps. His cannon sounds. He's dead and gone. Girl from 12 stands behind his corpse. She lingers there. Looking at the mess. She tells me, "Run."

I turn to run. I turn to get away from her. Then there's a sound even louder than a cannon.

I think it's some kind of eruption. Then another three blasts.

* * *

AN: So guys, what do you think about Saige?

Status of the Seventy-Fourth Hunger Games: 17 deaths; Career alliance shattered; Cato now dead; Clove starving, freezing and dying (still); Saige accounted for; Eruption ?


End file.
